SteamVR , No HMD + watchman dongle

General TouchDesigner Discussion
1

Hello,
I’m trying to run a valve index setup without a HMD.
I need to connect one controller and one tracker.
As you know the Valve system doesn’t use regular BT . The HMD is the hub to normally connect the controller.
Using watchman dongles ( the one supply with the tracker) allow direct connection without a headset ( after the little hack on the config file).
So far it works and teamVR can see the base station, controller and tracker but TD can only see two trackers , the controller is detected by TD as a tracker.
Any idea ?

thanks

XvGt

2

Both trackers and controllers will appear under the trackers output. The trackers output provides some general info which is applicable to both trackers and controllers. You can filter the output using the info DAT, which will provide a mapping for the tracker/controller and its serial.

Are you able to get controller-specific info (ie. actions) when you have the controller output selected on the OpenVR CHOP? We provide a default controller binding preset for HTC vive controllers, but you can also make your own. There’s some more info regarding that here: https://docs.derivative.ca/OpenVR_CHOP

3

Tracker output : the info DAT provide serial number for the controller and the tracker, that’s it ( no extra info as binding)
Controller output, nothing no output , all channel = 0 , info DAT is empty.

Thru the steamVR controller binding setup, TD is not even listed.

My headset is dysfunctional, so I cannot test if it makes any different with that setup.

In steamVR , the controller is well detected as a controller and all controls are working.

thanks

4

Are they successfully tracked when in tracker output?

Info DAT will be empty when in Controller (ie. action) output because it’s use case is mapping channels to devices when in tracker output.

Did you have TD open with an OpenVR operator in your network when looking at the SteamVR controller binding? That’s the only way to get it to appear.

5

Yes both , the tracker and controller are tracked in the openVR chop in tracker output mode.
And yes I have at least, one active openVR chop in my set up ( usually the full Jarrett’s) while checking the binding option in steamVR .
I have an 1.8.20 steamVR offline that I can try to see if it makes any difference ?
Can it be due to the no HMD config ? I doubt .
It is a valve index controller, not the vive .

The headset is not detected anymore on any of my system. I’m with the steam support to narrow what is going on but I believe some hardware default.

6

Not sure why TouchDesigner099.exe isn’t appearing in the binding config tool, but I expect it has something to do with not having an HMD. TouchDesigner’s SteamVR initialization must be failing somewhere for it not to appear. Are there any warnings on the OpenVR ops? Currently it won’t output any errors if it fails to initialize the action manifest file (TouchDesigner099/Config/OpenVRActions.json) but I’ll add some.

7

Hi, did you get ahead?
I remember modifying the init or pref files for Steam VR so it would start anywhere without a HMD, and with 1 tracker only + 1 base station. Not easy but possible, you might want to check that. Otherwise it might be that in the regular SteamVR state it requires an HMD. 2 cents, I forgot where that stuff is in my files and thought it would help to chime in.
Cheers, p