Very short standby time for controller batteries?

[Martin Rudat]

The batteries in the controllers run down surprisingly quickly in standby; in fact, they feel like they discharge faster when not in use.

I recently put away the controllers both at over 50% charge, didn't touch them for over 24 hours, and now both controllers need to be charged before they can be used.

 

Is there a method to turn the controllers off when putting them away? Should I leave them hooked up to a charger overnight so they're ready to go in the morning?

I wonder if they're turning up the power on the Bluetooth radio, attempting to connect to the headset (which is also off), and thus using more power than normal.

 

At this point, I'm not certain that an integrated battery is superior to using rechargeable AA batteries; when they're flat, I could swap the flat battery with a fully charged one, and I'm immediately ready to go.

I guess with a fleet of headsets, it's less of an issue, as it appears that you should be able to buy a pool of extra controllers (and batteries) to be recharged, grab a freshly charged set of controllers and swap them for the controllers that have gone flat, possibly at the same time as swapping out the battery in the headset.

I guess that I could buy a second set of controllers and swap them with the ones in active use as they go flat... but having them hooked up to the charger at 100% for days on end doesn't sound like a recipe for long-term battery health.

[Beta_Tester]

Yes I had noticed similar issues. You can completely power off the controllers by holding down the menu/Vive buttons for a few seconds until they vibrate.

[GhostPsi]

On 1/23/2023 at 3:21 AM, Martin Rudat said:

The batteries in the controllers run down surprisingly quickly in standby; in fact, they feel like they discharge faster when not in use.

I recently put away the controllers both at over 50% charge, didn't touch them for over 24 hours, and now both controllers need to be charged before they can be used.

 

Is there a method to turn the controllers off when putting them away? Should I leave them hooked up to a charger overnight so they're ready to go in the morning?

I wonder if they're turning up the power on the Bluetooth radio, attempting to connect to the headset (which is also off), and thus using more power than normal.

 

At this point, I'm not certain that an integrated battery is superior to using rechargeable AA batteries; when they're flat, I could swap the flat battery with a fully charged one, and I'm immediately ready to go.

I guess with a fleet of headsets, it's less of an issue, as it appears that you should be able to buy a pool of extra controllers (and batteries) to be recharged, grab a freshly charged set of controllers and swap them for the controllers that have gone flat, possibly at the same time as swapping out the battery in the headset.

I guess that I could buy a second set of controllers and swap them with the ones in active use as they go flat... but having them hooked up to the charger at 100% for days on end doesn't sound like a recipe for long-term battery health.

If you turn off the headset they should automatically turn off, if you put it into standby then you have to manually turn off the controllers. Some versions had a bug where controllers didnt go into full standby/turn off so make sure latest firmware and if continous issues make a support case with HTC

[Martin Rudat]

Now that I know how (it would be nice to have something added to the built-in documentation pointing out how to turn things off), I've been manually turning off the controllers and then the headset. I've attempted turning off the headset first (once so far), but that doesn't seem to turn off the controllers.

I wonder if I need to turn off the headset from the button on the battery pack (after taking off the headset) rather than using the shutdown/reboot menu (while still wearing it)?

I'll have to find out how to confirm if I'm running the latest firmware; there have been at least two firmware updates since I started using the headset, so I boldly assume I'm running the latest firmware. Still, it would be good to confirm that this is actually the case.

[RobP]

I think this is a recent bug. The controllers used to last 2-3 weeks when in standby. But ever since the last update, I'm lucky if they make it past 24 hours. I tend to leave mine permanently on charge now, though I wish HTC would fix this.

[Martin Rudat]

Turning off the headset using the button on the battery does turn off the controllers, or at least it did just for me just now.

It's also slightly faster, though a little less comfortable, than using the shutdown/restart menu by holding the... side button? and selecting the shutdown option.

Ideally, both methods should result in the same behaviour.

I would also have expected to find a 'power' submenu in the system menu, which would be nice to have in a future firmware update. 😃 

[Martin Rudat]

Sigh. It looks like I was wrong. It only looked like the controllers turned off when the headset was turned off from the power button on the battery.

That said, turning off the controllers engages passthrough mode, allowing you to put the controllers down before you try to turn the headset off, so turning off the controllers and then the headset seems to work reasonably well.