Endless Issues With Vive Trackers

[c4lcul4tion]

I’m trying to set up my 6 3.0 trackers and 2 SteamVR base stations and I’m encountering endless issues.

I use a Quest 2 with 6 3.0 Vive Trackers, and 2 2.0 SteamVR base stations. I use Space Calibrator to calibrate my trackers.

I’m defeated and need help. I’ve been trying once every few weeks. My main issues include:

1. One of my base stations has trouble tracking, but it doesn't seem to always be the same one. Before switching my base stations to channels 2 and 3 (they were on 1 and 2), one of them simply would not track even though it was detected in SteamVR. Now, one or the other loses tracking frequently, for a second or two or permanently.

2. After going from 3 to 6 trackers for the first time the other day, the trackers seem to become mirrored or translated randomly. They move accordingly but in the wrong position in VR. For example: a tracker may be in the front-right corner of the room, but in VR it appears in the back-left. It will move up and down in the same fashion but left/right and front/back motions are opposite. Usually occurs to more than 1 tracker and nothing seems to fix it.

I had normal issues in my previous apartment (small dorm room), but even 3 trackers in my new apartment were giving me a lot of trouble. Since going to 6, it's completely unmanageable. I don't know where the issues originate from, whether it be my PC, base stations, or the trackers themselves.

Thanks for any advice. I’m at a loss (a $1500 loss lmao). I'll answer any questions you may have.

[Sepfox]

Interference is a pretty big concern with wireless Lighthouse devices in general, not just Lighthouse trackers.

It's normal that wireless quality drops with more lighthouse devices. There's a few factors you can do to help with it:

Keep the dongles spaced apart from each other. HTC ships the dongles with a cradle and a cable, use both. Keep as much space inbetween the dongles as you can, keep the dongles away from your PC (USB 3.0 radiates on 2.5ghz, and the dongles use 2.4ghz so it can and will interfere, the dongles themselves only use USB 2.1).

If you route them to a hub, make sure the hub is MTT capable on the USB 2.0 chip (USB 3.0 is not needed and having a MTT controller inside the hub is much more important than having a usb 3.1 hub)

Keep the dongles close to your playspace. 2.4ghz is readily absorbed by water, so having your body inbetween the dongle and the tracker can cause connection dropouts, so position them where you face primarily.

There are a few aftermarket dongles around (NekoVR reciever, Kuroshin dongles) that are worth noting that work/pair out of the box and have better hardware, but the issue itself is in the low-latency wireless protocol which was designed for controllers primarily. From my experience, the HTC dongles are not too bad for normal vive trackers, though some devices like Index controllers generally require beefier hardware to properly and reliably connect in heavy interference heavier areas.


Swapping the apartment can play a big role as the 2.4ghz might be completely different now, you may have more neighbors that use 2.4ghz or more neighbors in general, increasing the chances of interference.


As a small tip, if you are in doubt if wireless interference is the issue, you can use a tracker wired directly to your PC, effectively skipping the entire wireless protocol and dongle stuff, if it works well there, it's interference you gotta look at.


On my own playspace (9 Lighthouse devices, 7 Vive 3.0's and 2 Index knuckles)
I have five dongles spaced out over a 2 meter wide table with around 40cm inbetween each dongle, as well as two dongles under my desk for my feet trackers.
The only thing that can run my controllers reliable is the NekoVR v2 7-in-1 dongle with dongle #2-6 disabled, and the controllers paired to dongle #1 and #7 to create some distances inbetween the full-size antennas. Neko dongle is flashed with Index headset radio firmware.