Vive Trackers don't work during the day!

[MichaelPolk]

I have had the Vive Trackers for a few months now, and I've noticed something very peculiar and obnoxious. The trackers simply don't work during the day for me. I've done EVERYTHING, and yes I really mean everything, to troubleshoot when they are not working properly. The only conclusion I've managed to reach is that they don't work during the day. I did an experiment and tried using the trackers for a week straight. I charged them very frequently to make sure that they were at full power, and did nothing physically to my room, and made no changes to my computer.

 

For the experiment, I tried the trackers during two different times of day. Once in the morning at 9 AM, and once at night at 9 PM. Every day when I used them in the morning, there was some kind of issue. Either they wouldn't show up at all in VR, or they would fly around wildly. I would always troubleshoot for a while, with restarting my pc or covering my TV with a blancket and nothing would work. Then I would try at night, and have no issues at all. I would even do the same things like covering and uncovering my TV, and restarting my PC. No problems at all at night. Except there is a problem with that.

 

When I am able to play during the day, my house is empty. I'm the only one here and can make as much noise as I want. That's an ideal way to play for me. But guess what, the trackers don't work during the day for some reason, and have to play later at night when people are getting home from work or trying to sleep. This is unacceptable. 

 

I'm just super curious as to why this is the case. Are the trackers made with some kind of light sensitve senors that the hand controllers don't have? Because everything else works no matter what the time is. My room gets kind of bright during the day, but not blinding. I already spent $600 for the vive itself, and $300 for the trackers. I shouldn't have to spend more money on blackout curtains just to make them work properly.

 

If anyone knows what's going on, I would greatly appreicate a response.

[HackPerception]

Are you using Tracker 2018 (blue logo) or Tracker 2017 (grey logo)? SteamVR 1.0 or SteamVR 2.0 basestations?

 

The sun is basically a giant IR emission source. 1.0 tracking uses bright "

" of IR light to set the hardware clocks to t = 0. Sunlight can definitely cross the threshold required to make the system thing that it's seeing a sync flash and tracker 18 may be a little more susceptible to it due to the newer tracking ASICs - baring in mind that Valve is still modifying the firmware and backend for 2.0 tech and that that system's performance will change with future updates.