Controller battery life / reported battery %age

[orangytang]

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?

[Shen]

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]

0.47 is a test value. The actual battery status is not plumbed at the moment, sorry.

[orangytang]

Darn, any idea when this functionality will be available?

Thanks.

[vito0719]

It's almost a year now, any news on this?

[bendotcom]

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]

cool I'll check it out. cheers mate!

[uwu]

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