By now we have enough evidence to pretty much establish with little reason for doubt that the issue lies in the insufficient wifi bandwidth of the Pimax headset.
I had the issue myself, that happened only with Index Controllers and never with Vive Wands. In the meanwhile I had to RMA an Index Controller due to left stick drift / wear issues, and the new one had exactly the same problem.
What completely fixed the problem for me was buying a Steam Controller Wireless Receiver, flashing it with the VR Dongle bios, and attaching it to the Pimax’s bottom USB port with an USB adapter. The problem never appeared again, ever.
This works better than having two Wireless Receivers plugged directly into the PC, because, I assume, sometimes they get too far from the received and may occasionally cause the same issue due to the bandwidth reducing due to distance, so the best solution is keeping both receivers close: one should be the one of the headset (that seems to have enough bandwidth for one Index Controller) and the other still attached to the headset via the USB port so that reception is optimal at all times.
I have yet to see any convincing evidence that points in another direction.
Following up, I am happy to say the 3rd party watchman dongle works perfectly. It’s a scorcher today, too hot in my attic for my lil window AC to keep up. I stomached 20 mins of alyx, and 3 beat saber expert songs. 0 loss of tracking.
However, although the oshpark purple gets some definite swag points from me, I don’t think the build quality is the best. Clearly missing some wetting on a lot of pads especially on the IC, check this scope shot of the nordic 2.4 GHz transceiver IC. However, on plugging in the PC immediately recognizes it as a watchman dongle. Pairing steps for those interested:
-using the lighthouse console in the steamvr folder, unpair all controllers (command unpairall)
-do not power the pimax HMD, or turn it off.
-start steamVR. click the 3 lines, go to devices-pair controller. Choose index, and it should just pair to the watchman with no issues.
-unplug dongle, plug into usb A to C adapter as mentioned above, plug into pimax.
-pair the other controller in pitool to assure it pairs to the HMD
-have fun. 3d print a housing for this poor exposed pcb.
Yeah shipping in the US was only 10 dollars, so I spent 30, well worth it IMO. I’ve shipped things internationally, when you’re small time the prices are just unreal. I’m on the border to Canada in the US, and shipping a jewel case cd for my band to Ontario is over 10 dollars. Could’ve delivered it myself for cheaper. Hopefully pimax addresses the issue themselves, but in your case I’d definitely just get a used valve dongle if not.
Correct. Pimax will need to fix this as it is a legitimate defect in the product. If it’s a hardware issue, I sure hope they honor replacements past warranty, because we’ve waited over a year for controllers. Their image will not look very great if they don’t.
i’m not 100% sure but i think pitool 260 has fixed my IC dropping. there were only a couple times while playing NMS that i thought maybe it dropped but it could have been something else. i’m definitely not seeing them drop out in SteamVR Home like i used to with 256.
Both @Leonardo and I are having better results with newer firmware so apparently magic was not necessary
I think you’re probably right that they’re maybe transferring less data. Or maybe they just had some other bug that they fixed that was not as sensitive to a single IC.
I do think I’ve been seeing some weirder stuff after playing NMS for longer so I think it may still have some issues but it’s significantly better.
honestly, i’ve noticed this degradation of tracking in Beat Saber overtime even with VIVE wands, it takes 30 minutes or maybe more then it’s going worse overtime, i always thought it was a wand issue but as it’s happening with IC too it’s not a wand issue, is a Pimax issue, too bad i’ve ordered IC because of this (and because 1 of my wand has 3 broken sensors) but it looks things will only go worse. i have a steam controller, i still have to understand how both will co-exists (pimax and steam controller dongle with modified firmware) but i may do some tests once IC arrives
the fact that performance degradation goes worse overtime, is a good thing, because it may be due to some buffer getting full and no purge is done to free it up, i’m not a programmer but if the bandwidht is not enough, is not enough all the times and not after a while, i seriously think that it can be fixed by pimax devs making periodic purge overtime. in order to get the pimax back to initial state when everything is working fine.
Hit me up when you get your ICs, I’ll help you out with the dongle. You flash the firmware and pair the controllers using a regular USB port. After paired, Now run the dongle off of a USB A-C adapter as recommended above to connect to the HMD, its duck taped down, looks ridiculous but tracking is flawless.
I doubt that, prob only one dongle per usb port. No you only need one dongle, though I’m not sure how many controllers can pair to it. One controller pairs to the HMD and works just fine, it’s the introduction of two controllers that causes drop outs. I came to that conclusion when wiring a single controller USB C-USB C to the HMD fixed the issue. I don’t have the official valve dongle, I used a 3rd party dongle from virtual builds, but it was very easy to get working.
unfortunately is not because of sensor as i start losing tracking on both wands, i tought it was because of wands or base station going warm after a while, in fact i’ve tried also to keep base station off before the session, or remove the wands from charge once full (i always keep wands connected the the usb charger when i don’t use it). I did those tests because i was experiencing that degradation, with no changes obviously. i usually did quite long sessions on beat saber, usually 1+ hour, i don’t remember exactly when it stats going bad, between 30 mins and 1 hour more or less.
