Base station reporting Fault 02; HEEELP!

[Futuruum]

Hi!

 

I've wrote two letters via the "contact us" but nobody has contacted me, so i figgured, i should try this forum aswell. 

 

So, recently one of the base stations started malafunctioning. It started blinking red and SteamVR reported, that a base station has developed an internal problem (fault 02). It happened at random, at that time no firmware updates were done or anything else like that.  When looking at SteamVR logs, it reports "lighthouse: Base 3B5D486E axis 0 appears to have failed". Also when looking the base station through a smartphone camera, I can see that the horizontal LED is not working. 

Any tips would be welcome on how to actually go about this, because the unit was shipped to Estonia (EU), but the support does not even allow Estonia to be selected from the drop-down, so the letters i wrote i addressed to Finland, but nobody got back to me :(

 

Thanks!

[Synthesis]

 

Hi Futuruum, sorry to hear you've having issues with your base station. Have you tried contacting us on our live chat support @ https://www.vive.com/eu/support/contactus/  ?

If that hasn't worked, please send me a private message with your address, name, email and any other contact details as well as the serial number on your base station.

Thank you,

-John C

[Sjokkel]

Mine started having the same issue. I tried a game today and after quitting the game i noticed the error. At that moment it looked like it was tracking OK. 
The red light was blinking and fault 02 was shown. In the logs i found (modelid: 9) transmitting faults +laser0 (00000004). Checking the lights on the unit everyone was lit however. The unit does make a fluctuating sound instead of the normal hum. I'm guessing 1 the motor is having some problems so the laser is not getting enough samples.
I unplugged the unit several times, for longer periods. Once both base stations detect eachother the green light switches quickly to a red blinking light. I've sent a mail to support and i'm waiting for an answer. Timing is quite bad. I was about to have some people over for a BBQ and they wanted to try the vive.

[Synthesis]

 

Support should reply to you shortly, if they don't, please contact me here and I'll help you.

Thanks,

-John C

[CaTaPulT]

When you mentioned the noise problem, it reminded me of the problem I had, one of my base stations was making a lot of noise, it worked fine tracking wise but was quite noisy. So what I did was unplug it, take it off it's mount, then I gently slapped it into the palm of my hand (kind of a nudge), and when I put it back up and started it, it was quiet as when it was new, it's been roughly a month since I did this and it's still quiet and working fine. It's almost like by nudging it, I put something inside the base station back into alignment. :)

Regards: Jack

[kd8hqk]

I've been dealing with this issues sense august of last year.. My warranty was up November of last year they dicked around with me until my warranty was up now they are saying they won't help me because it's out of warranty and that I'd have to either pay $90 per base station (sense BOTH are failing one on axis 0 the other on axis 1)  or buy new ones... They even had me send in my headset itself for repair while it was still under warranty however they wouldn't let me send the base stations in.... I have the chat transcript and showed them in an escalated email from where I asked if I could send my base stations in and the rep Laura C said no let's see if this works first and if it's still a problem I'll put a note in here to extend the warranty if there's still the same problem... Well that was in November when I sent it in right before my warranty was up because I flat out told her... Look I'm tired of having you guys just have me try this and that which doesn't fix this issue and had been for months having me try other stuff! I mean LOOK at all these times I chatted in!


All these times I've chatted in with no results


These are ALL For the same issue, and that chat with Laura C Is the one where I asked to send in the base stations as well because there were 3 times THREE TIMES where I chatted in counting that time and 2 before I believe when they said "OH there seems to be an Axis error" it wasn't until some of the more recent chats where they actually discovered it was Axis 0 on one base station and Axis 1 on the second base station, I even sent in pictures of the base stations when it was having the issue, and they are saying I can't get it fixed under warranty now... Well yeah when you use delay tactics on someone and have them do so much other stuff until you can get them out of warranty... This is the worst experience I've had with HTC and I was NEVER nasty to any of the reps I'm a technician my self for an ISP so I understand electronics aren't perfect and they will fail.. But they never did resolve my issue that I've had sense AUGUST 2017 and it's now February 2018 how is this possible from a customer support standpoint?? To have the exact same issue for this long period of time after spending so much on the system for them to just delay me until my warranty was expired...  


Also I noticed an interesting design change... My friend had gotten the Vive just this past year in the summer time, and the way the LED Array is set up in his base station is like a grid and the way mine is set up is like a honeycomb don't know if that was a design change due to the failures of the first release or just odd coincidence.. But just thought that was interesting


So now I'm left with a decision to make... Do I buy 2 new base stations for $300, or hope they make good on what was told to me by Laura C or do I spend the extra $100 ($400 Total) to get the Oculus Rift system (that does include the touch controllers now)  due to my poor experience with vive... I really liked vive over the rift which is why I ultimately went with Vive...(I even had the DK2 from oculus)but after being tossed around and delayed like I have been I mean come on AUGUST 2017- FEBRUARY 2018 with the same issue and no resolution and to be told sorry you are now out of warranty??? It makes for a seeming less and less of a tough decision after all that I've been through with this.

[Rhiannon]

Would you please PM me with the ticket numbers of those conversations, and your name, please?  I will look into this.

[SDHarwick]

The same thing is happening to one of my base stations. I put in a ticket earlier today. It really is a shame because it makes the system pretty much unusable.