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VIVE Tracker haptic pin output


MKuma

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I am trying to create a home-made gun to be attached to the HTC VIVE Tracker. As part of that, I have designed a vibration circuit to work with a 3V input signal, and it works fine with 3 volts.

 

The problem is when I use it with the Tracker. I thought it worked at first, but then I noticed that the strength of the haptic feedback was less than when I connected the circuit to a 3V DC output. So then, I measured the output pin with a multimeter, and I observed that the output was about 1.5 volts, half of what's supposed to be. I want to find a solution.

 

An important thing is that I am testing it with a console program I created using the openVR API. To trigger the API, I use the following code:

 

//Write the vibration time in milliseconds on terminalcin >> input;if (input == 0) return true; //Program closes if time written equals zerofor (int i = 0; i < input; i += 5) {	vr_pointer->TriggerHapticPulse(id, 0, 5000);	this_thread::sleep_for(std::chrono::milliseconds(5));}
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  • 2 months later...

I am also developing custom controllers to use with the Vive Tracker and I am having issues with the haptic feedback pin. You mentioned that the pin 1 is designed as a digital output to turn on/off the vibration motor but it is not a power source.

 

I have opened my hyperblaster and it doesn't have any internal battery that could feed the vibration motor, the way the circuit works seems to be feeding power to the vibration motor from the tracker itself, the hyperblaster does not have an arduino or any microcomputer that can treat the small voltage of the tracker as a signal to power a vibration motor from an external battery.

I think the problem could be related to the current SteamVR version, I have 4 trackers 2.0 and they all used to get haptic feedback from my hyperblaster but none of them do anymore. The rest of the buttons work perfectly is just the haptic feedback, which is the same problem I have with my custom controllers. I have measured the output voltage when I call the function SteamVR_Controller.Input(deviceIndex).TriggerHapticPulse(3999), and none of them reaches even 1v but their led light blinks white which means the haptic feedback is getting called.

Could you please confirm with the Vive Tracker team if the issue is related to SteamVR or if they have more detail documentation about how to make it work? 

Thank you.

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,

 

Branches of SteamVR released after-June have broken some aspects of the Vive Tracker integration with SteamVR. Valve has released a temporary branch of SteamVR that will restore these integrations to their state on 6/21/18: SteamVR v1527117754. As a first step, I would recommend switching over to this branch for development purposes. 

 

 should be able to provide more specific support on this. 

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Hi, Thanks for the quick reply!

I noticed that the new SteamVR version had issues with the Trackers, at least only with the Input as it would still do positional tracking, I downgraded to the SteamVR v1527117754 version but even then while I could use the input from the pogo pins again I couldn't get the Haptic Feedback to function, not in Unity and not with games that support the Hyperblaster like Duck Season and Arizona Sunshine.

 

More recently I have been testing some more and I am currently using the latest SteamVR released. have been able to use the pogo pin Input of the tracker by using the new Binding Input system and assigning my trackers as Handheld Trackers, but once again none of them are able to do haptic feedback in Unity or in games with the Hyperblaster. I have tested them with my Vive and my Vive Pro, with 3 different computers and 4 different trackers, so although it is possible I doubt the problem is hardware related.

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  • 3 months later...
  • 2 years later...

I think on the matter of controlling a motor, you will need a mosfet or something else to turn the motor on and off.  I am looking into something similar, but we are looking at adding some batteries into the gun itself which will also top the tracker power up over usb/pogo's.  basically you need the output signal to trigger the circuit to allow the current from the main motor power to flow. No arduinos or other controllers necessary. 

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