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SLAB Oct 25, 2015 @ 10:40am

Batteries dead already?

I can't have played more than 10 hours on this thing and my batteries were completely dead this morning. I'm hoping that somehow the batteries included with the controller were really low to begin with. Anyone else else had this?

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Showing 1-11 of 11 comments

Equim Oct 25, 2015 @ 11:11am

Yeah that sounds like you got an old set of batteries. I've used mine for way more than 10 hours by now and I'm still running on the batteries that came with it. Got a pack of rechargeable ones ready to go for when these empty out.

✖️⁧⁧ Nervenkitzler Oct 25, 2015 @ 11:24am

that's what I think

even with haptics set to 'high' they should last way more thsn 10 h

God Ginrai Oct 25, 2015 @ 11:41am

Yea, you definitely got a bad set of batteries. I'm still on the batteries that came with mine, and I've logged at least 25 hours with my controller.

SLAB Oct 25, 2015 @ 3:05pm

Interestingly enough the steam controller drains batteries pretty thoroughly. They each only had about .85 volts left. The xbox 360 controllers dont seem to come anywhere close and will consider batteries empty at around 1.1 to 1.0 volts. At any rate I replaced them with brand new duracell batteries so it'll be interesting to see how long these last.

SLAB Dec 10, 2015 @ 10:09pm

Just an update to close this one off in case someone reads this and worries. My new batteries finally died. I paid very close attention and I got just over 80 hours out of them so confirmed, the batteries the controller shipped with were lame for whatever reason.

Malecord Dec 11, 2015 @ 3:08am

I think the December update broke something.

In 2 month of moderate usage my battery indicator was set to 88%. Yesterday after the update in 3 hours it went down all to 32%.

Can it be that the custom Bluetooth the controller uses for some reason is behaving like a traditional Bluetooth? In any case it is definitely a software problem and it will be patched. I'm opted in to the Beta.

Tucu Dec 11, 2015 @ 3:17am

Originally posted by Malecord:
I think the December update broke something.

In 2 month of moderate usage my battery indicator was set to 88%. Yesterday after the update in 3 hours it went down all to 32%.

Can it be that the custom Bluetooth the controller uses for some reason is behaving like a traditional Bluetooth? In any case it is definitely a software problem and it will be patched. I'm opted in to the Beta.

State of Charge estimation based on voltage is not always very accurate. Specially if you don't know the discharge curve of the specific battery. Your batteries probably just reached the point in the curve where voltage drops fast and Steam updated its estimate based on this.

Malecord Dec 11, 2015 @ 3:38am

Originally posted by Tucu:
State of Charge estimation based on voltage is not always very accurate. Specially if you don't know the discharge curve of the specific battery. Your batteries probably just reached the point in the curve where voltage drops fast and Steam updated its estimate based on this.

Sure it can be. I'm not complaining about the power consumption. Overall I'm well beyond the 80 hours declared by Valve.

I'm using the included battery pack. Next ones will be eneloop.

SLAB Dec 11, 2015 @ 8:24am

Yeah that's how my batteries went as well. Stayed at 100% and very qyickly dropped off at the end of the battery life. Most AA batteries are charged over their rated voltages and that may have something to do with the way Steam is reading the power at 100% for so long. It is still pretty interesting to me though that the SC well and throughly drains batteries. I used to put "drained" batteries from my xbox controllers into a wireless HTC keyboard because they still had a lot of life. Could never do that with the SC. Also I might note that in my just over 80 hours that is only actual playtime and does not count and idle time of accidently leaving the controller on.