Same controller pairing multiple times, causes interfering inputs

[Christine]

Very frequently, when turning on the controller & BP mode to launch a game, I find my single steam pad is appearing as 4 seperate devices, 3 of which have no battery. The system seems to be accepting input from all of these imaginary sources simultaneously, so whatever I press or touch, it interprets multiple inputs of the default binding as well. The controller uses default settings for haptics when this is happening.
Turning off the controller only makes the first, correct paring disappear; the three ghost controllers remain and cannot be modified.

The only way I know of to deal with this, so far, is to unplug the wireless dongle, wait, plug it back in, wait for it to be recognized, and then turn the controller back on. Restarting steam might also handle it, but it would probably take longer.

This mostly seems to happen after the PC (Windows 7) has been in sleep mode, with the wireless dongle plugged in and steam running, and with the controller turned off before during and after the machine enters sleep mode.
I am not 100% sure sleep mode is the cause, but it seems to be related.

Do others have this problem? I can't find any mention of it, and I've googled just about every phrase I can think of that describes it.
Is there anything I can do?

[cammelspit]

Sleep mode is a thing that FTM tends to confuse the software. Unplug the dongle and re plug it in to fix it. Just have to deal with it till a proper fix is made. Or dont use sleep mode, either way. A lot of people have reported this too. You are not the only one to boil it down to sleep mode. I dont ever use sleep mode and I use W10 so have never had this issue before.

[Lez B Ann]

I've not heard of this... odd.

[Christine]

Like I said, I haven't been able to find any other reports or questions about this. Is there a name for the issue I couldn't think of? Where has it been discussed?

I guess if I unplug the dongle beforehand, that would at least save time.
It's really irritating, though. Steam's startup / login time, when added to my PC's less than stellar boot time can feel like half an eternity, so most days I sleep it overnight instead of shutting down.

[chasquit]

I've just started using my Steam Controller for heavy gaming sessions and have had this issue, mainly with Rocket League. Until now I didn't even know what's the reason but reading the thread and thinking twice I remember to have entered sleep mode at leaste once before the problem appears, so this definitely might be the cause. I'll double check it as soon as I sit on my PC just to be sure. Btw does anyone knows if there's a fix for this to date (apart from avoid entering sleep mode :P)?

[Air]

This is about the oldest issue with the Steam Controller and, quite frankly, I'm surprised that it isn't fixed yet. This is exclusively and issue with the Steam Client itself and it only happens when using the wireless controller dongle.

It's really annoying since it makes the Steam Controller send out multiple outputs and receive multiple inputs(while in desktop mode, low and medium settings for the haptics will overlap). Even when the controller is off, Steam will still detect controllers, which still causes issues with certain games that have contoller support.

Originally posted by Meccanica:

Like I said, I haven't been able to find any other reports or questions about this. Is there a name for the issue I couldn't think of? Where has it been discussed?

I know this an late reply to a month-old post, but search up "ghost controller". Here's the oldest post about it I've found(2 days after the release of the controller): http://steamcommunity.com/app/353370/discussions/0/496881136906045850/

[MartyWF]

Here is a place to ask:


[e-mail]

MartyWF

[Christine]

A recent beta update claimed to fix 'zombie controllers', which I guessed was related to this issue, but upon starting a game I immediately had the same problem again, so either it didn't work or it was an unrelated problem. I haven't examined the issue any closer since then.
These days I just pull the dongle out and plug it in again when waking the computer.