SW3 Dongle refusing to recognize trackers

Support
#1

Hello, I recently received my trackers. I tried them out (good straps) and they can pair… when one of my Index controllers is off. And only one of them at a time. So I was able to get into Steam’s tracker settings to put them where they are going to be on my body (waist and both feet - the foot one I’m not sure if I can have the strap low on my ankle or if I literally have to wrap it around the top of my foot, I’m new at this full-body tracking game).

They also all show up when plugged into their respective charging cables.

However, they are utterly refusing to communicate with the dongle. I can ONLY have two total things paired, nothing else, and that kind of defeats the purpose of the trackers.

I know there’s a topic of this nature already, but I wasn’t sure whether it was appropriate to hijack the other one. I have not yet modified the requireHmd and activateMultipleDrivers settings, as that other thread indicated, nor did I run the power thing they did.

I did, however, run the lighthouse_console.exe file that was advised. This is the result I got when the dongle is in:

Lighthouse-Paired
Lighthouse-Paired969×489 13.9 KB

It reports 5 devices when the dongle is not plugged in, which tells me the dongle is trying to do SOMEthing. Also will note in case it matters that none of those six device codenames correspond to the three trackers (whose serial numbers show up in Steam’s tracker settings) I have.

I can try running that command in different states (SteamVR off, SteamVR on without paired tracker, SteamVR on with paired tracker) if necessary for troubleshooting. I just… don’t know what other route to take to address this.

#2

The five devices are the dongles chips, one for each connection. That is normal when the dongle is conneceted.

Have you tried, connecting your normal controllers first. Then plugging the dongle in with the extension and then trying to connect them via the SteamVR software?

#3

So… following order of operations as was suggested got them working and fully detecting. I will admit I don’t understand why, but it does function properly. Tested it in VRChat with a model that was already rigged appropriately and here’s what I observe now.

For foot placement, best I can do is wrap around the heel or slightly above it. These detect without issue, it’s just a matter of placing them right so my feet aren’t inside the floor.

The waist one is where I’m having trouble now, and I’m presuming it’s getting interference from - and I mean this seriously - my girth. Waist tracker detects, but it detects intermittently - which results in some weird stuff with VRChat models.

Setup guide says to put the dongle in view of the trackers, but in my case getting around the girth issue would mean having it on the floor in front of my computer. Is this about right?

#4

Is your base station setup seeing them?

#5

Given the placement of the tracker, that is the part that got inconsistent and why I kind of assumed my bulk was interfering. I basically tried to place it as if it were a belt buckle, thinking that was the only way I could get the alignment right.

Since I can’t exactly change the base station setup without ruining everything else (I use four stations with my Index, meaning I have all-around coverage), I went with what I could control, which was the dongle.

I waited to answer with that until I had a moment to try putting the tracker on my side, where my size doesn’t cause overlap - which got it to work much more consistently. There’s some gimmicks of having to redo the calibration quite a bit, but at this point that’s strictly a VRChat issue - and the models aren’t going into the stratosphere at least.

I’d call this issue solved, at least regarding the actual trackers and dongle.

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