Pairing

Pairing Lighthouse Controllers or Trackers #

To pair lighthouse-capable hardware such as the Valve Index or HTC Vive Pro controllers, or VIVE Trackers you’ll need enough receivers (one for each device).

Receivers can be either:

  • watchman dongles (plugged in your computer, preferably not on an USB hub)
  • if you have a lighthouse HMD (e.g. Valve Index, HTC Vive, Bigscreen Beyond), there will be two already built-in (for both controllers)

Pairing via SteamVR #

You can follow the normal pairing process by launching SteamVR, and opening the pairing window (in the Devices menu).

If however for some reason this does not work (in particular, if the pairing window does not render), you can work around it by doing the pairing process via lighthouse_console.

Pairing via lighthouse_console #

In a terminal, launch lighthouse_console by running

~/.steam/steam/steamapps/common/SteamVR/tools/lighthouse/bin/linux64/lighthouse_console

Identifying available receivers #

You’ll be greeted by a shell which starts by listing the serial number of attached receivers (both dongles and built-in, if your HMD is connected).

Selecting a receiver is done by running serial <serialnumber> in the opened shell. When pairing new devices, you’ll want to find a receiver that isn’t paired with a device already. After a receiver is selected, you can run identifycontroller to check if the receiver is paired with a device (assuming the device is on).

In general, built-in HMD receivers will have longer serial numbers than dongle ones.

If either you want to replace previously paired devices (e.g. when changing controllers) or you’re struggling to identify which receiver to use, run unpairall. This will unpair all lighthouse devices!

Pairing a device #

Once you have selected an available receiver with serial <serialnumber>:

  1. Turn on your device
  2. Put it in pairing mode (e.g. hold System+B for Valve controllers), the LED should be blinking blue
  3. Run the pair command

After a few seconds, the LED should turn green, and the device is now paired.

Do this for each device you want to pair (remember to use a different receiver for each device), and exit the shell by running quit.