SteamVR-Update may have broken Base Station 2.0 functionality

[TilS]

Hello,

Both my friend and I are customers of the VIVE Pro Complete Edition (with 2.0 lighthouses).

For both of us, one lighthouse each "died" within the past 48 hours - red blinking L.E.D., which, according to the sources on this website, means a mechanical / rotor failure and need for servicing. 

However, what puzzled me is a) the coincidence which I don't believe in, and b) the fact that ever since the last updates, ONE of the lighthouses (the working one) is being shown as a 2.0 (icon), the other one as a 1.0. 

As this issue can quickly lead to huge efforts and cost (300-350 USD for the two of us alone for sending them back to the vendor / vendor sending them to HTC / vendor giving out "new" lighthouses to us), this issue should be looked into at Warp 9.9 or faster.

Again, I may be wrong and it may all be a coincidence, but that possibility seems very, very small in light of the findings. 


Cheers,

Til 

[Synthesis]

 

 

The last SteamVR update (not beta, which I can see you're not using) was Jan 30th, so I don't think that there's any reason to think SteamVR updates had anything to do with this.

The grey base station icon is the default "No device detected" icon.

I'm not sure where you're getting the 300-350USD price for an RMA. I don't know who your vendor is or what the process there is, but if you're under warranty, the device will be RMA'd without cost to you through HTC.

Red lights happen on base stations. The rotor is a part that spins extremely rapidly at all times it is in operation. Physical trauma to the unit while in use or otherwise could cause it to no longer function properly, in which case, we recommend setting up an RMA ticket with us.

Thank you,

-John C

[TilS]

Hi John,

thank you for clearing that up. 

So, we were apparently both just very unlucky with our Base Stations not being active for more than 100 / 20 hours respectively, not being moved out of place and still breaking down within such a short amount of time. 

The prices I've calculated refer to the actual price at which Base Stations can be bought in Germany (and, probably, most other European nations).

In fact, there is not a single vendor here even selling single 2.0 base stations - Amazon has 1.0 Base Stations for roughly 240 Eur / 270 USD.

We have managed to get RMAs for both our devices, but as they were sold as Complete Editions, the -entire- sets are now being replaced - I don't know what will actually happen with the hardware and I am not a logistics expert, but shipment for 1500 USD devices can't be cheap. 

In other news, one of the clients of my company has a five-day event this week, and both their VIVE Pros have stopped working today on two seperate laptops -  with reoccuring "Compositor not available" issues, then, once we got them running by unplugging, we made the big mistake of following a recommended Nvidia driver update - which resulted in them displaying nothing at all - even though they are now recognized by SteamVR and we are able to see content like the Tutorial on the monitors of both notebooks.

We did a clean and complete uninstall of SteamVR, Steam, Viveport and all USB drivers with the tools recommended by VALVE, then installed everything again from scratch and are now stuck trying to install the old Nvidia driver versions. 

Said client is now on day two of their event, and I cannot see either of their two machines running tomorrow. 

Up until a week ago, I would have considered the Vive Pro a safe bet for most situations and the vast majority of applications. 

Now, one week later, we have had two hardware failures in privately used machines, and two massive software failures on client machines, without any driver updates, any funky software / driver installations or maltreatment of the hardware on our / their end whatsoever. 

They literally just stopped working properly, and after running a recommended driver update just to be totally on the safe side, stopped working altogether. 

I really don't know what to say anymore, except that after one week, my judgement must change from "quite reliable" to "absolutely disastrous". 

[TilS]

P.S.:

To whom this might be of interest,


Our "black VIVE"-issue could be resolved on at least one machine by running a clean DDU-Uninstall of the latest Nvidia drivers and a rollback to (in our case) 416.81. 

[Synthesis]

 

 

Compositor errors are almost always configuration errors. Either Windows has been set to use external displays and is incorrectly reading the HMD as an external display or SteamVR has not be set to "Direct Mode" in the settings>developer tab (This is usually also caused by modifying windows display settings.) Vive is locked at 90hz so it cannot operate as an extended desktop with monitors at a different refresh rate (not that it should be used as one for any reason.) when Windows wants to use it as an extra display.

I'm not aware of any compatibility bugs in the latest Nividia GPU release (419.35). If there was such an issue, it would be widespread and likely Nividia would have released a hotfix for it in the past two weeks.

In the future, if you should need an RMA for a base station or other component in Europe, please contact our support at www.vive.com/eu/support/contactus 

The agents on the Live Chat will respond quickly and get the individual unit replaced or repaired under warranty as needed. Sending back the entire kit is not necessary.

Thank you,

-John C