SteamVR Developer Hardware

SteamVR Developer Hardware

orangytang Sep 30, 2015 @ 2:15pm
Controller battery life / reported battery %age
I don't know how typical this is, but usually with a full day of dev I have to switch out the batteries at least once, otherwise they keep dropping their connection (the indicator on the status goes yellow, but I assume that's because the dongles are still connected).

I had a poke around at the API and found Prop_DeviceBatteryPercentage_Float, and after a little hacking in SteamVR.cs, exposed it for a specified device index.

Oddly, from inserting fresh batteries, the number I get is 0.47. Assuming that's actually a normalised 0-1 value rather than an actual percentage, that seems off for fresh batteries. Is this normal behaviour? The charger had been showing green lights for a couple of hours so I assumed they were fully charged.

Also - can the controller battery amount be properly exposed in the API please?
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Showing 1-7 of 7 comments
Shen Sep 30, 2015 @ 3:02pm 
I know for a very short period of time a few months ago, the backs of the controllers were showing a battery percentage (which never changed) and the time - seemed liked it was a test but was removed.
bendotcom  [developer] Oct 2, 2015 @ 12:40am 
0.47 is a test value. The actual battery status is not plumbed at the moment, sorry.
orangytang Oct 3, 2015 @ 2:56am 
Darn, any idea when this functionality will be available?

Thanks.
vito0719 Jul 29, 2016 @ 2:48am 
It's almost a year now, any news on this?
bendotcom  [developer] Aug 3, 2016 @ 4:24pm 
Battery status (level and charge status) is fully functional for Vive controllers. There is no support for battery level monitoring for the devkit controllers (black with spongy trigger and "hat" tracking).
vito0719 Aug 3, 2016 @ 8:16pm 
cool I'll check it out. cheers mate!
uwu Mar 5, 2018 @ 7:45am 
Hey!
I had success returning my Vive controllers battery level using
SteamVR.instance.GetFloatProperty(Valve.VR.ETrackedDeviceProperty.Prop_DeviceBatteryPercentage_Float, device.index);
thanks to you.

However, it doesn't work with my Oculus Touch controllers (using the same code) as it always returns 0 when my controllers are actually charged.

The Touch have a way to return their battery level as we can see it in Oculus Home.
Is that a bug in SteamVR?
I'm using the SteamVR plugin for Unity - v1.2.3 and SteamVR version 1519673958
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Date Posted: Sep 30, 2015 @ 2:15pm
Posts: 7