Using crazyradio as a replacement for a vive tracker dongle

Discussions related to positioning systems where the position is calculated outside the Crazyflie and sent to the device using radio, including MoCap systems
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elypter
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Joined: Sun Jun 07, 2020 9:25 pm

Using crazyradio as a replacement for a vive tracker dongle

Post by elypter »

I found my way to this forum for a completely different reason than probably most other people. i have an original vive headset and then when the index was released i bought the controllers. now i have 2 index controllers and 2 old vive controllers. there are instructions to flash those controllers to behave like vive trackers. this is a great way of repurposing something that otherwise has no real use anymore. the problem is that you can only connect 2 devices at a time to the headset. for trackers you need additional reciever dongles which cannot be bought seperately or only at an absurd price. there used to be the possibility to reflash a steam controller dongle but those are discontinued now too. so i went out searching for alternative flashable dongles with an nrf chip. thats when i found crazyradio. unfortunately flashing the firmware doesnt work.

tldr:
i want to flash a crazyradio to be a replacement for a vive tracker dongle but it doesnt work.

i took the same binary that is used in the guide for flashing a steam controller dongle and then flashed it according to these instructions and then got the following error message:

Code: Select all

verification failed at byte 0 (expected 0x02, read 0xFA)
flashing the intended firmware works and flashing a steam controller dongle also worked in the past(i only have one unfortunately). any idea what i could do differently or is this even remotely possible? thanks for reading.
tobias
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Re: Using crazyradio as a replacement for a vive tracker dongle

Post by tobias »

I didn't know you could do this, cool. Could you post more about what goes wrong. The flashing should still work however putting the Crazyrado PA in bootloader mode again might not work as the normal Crazyradio FW has a USB command to do this. Thus when you flashed it to become a steam controller dongle then maybe you have to use their bootloader tool after that.
elypter
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Joined: Sun Jun 07, 2020 9:25 pm

Re: Using crazyradio as a replacement for a vive tracker dongle

Post by elypter »

thanks for the reply. it is no longer possible to put it in bootloader mode and on usbdeview it shows up as "Unknown USB Device (Device Descriptor Request Failed)". it also doesnt show up as steam controler or vive tracker dongle which is required to do anything with the steam supplied tools including flashing. it seems to be in a bricked state. i have another one and tried it as well to see if it was just a fluke but i flashed back the original firmware after i got the same error message before unplugging it. maybe it could have worked this time but there is no way of knowing without risking to brick that one as well. i thouhgt maybe someone here knows a trick like flipping a bit somewhere in the binary. unless someone has an idea i'll probably go for another attempt within the next few days or weeks.
tobias
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Joined: Mon Jan 28, 2013 7:17 pm
Location: Sweden

Re: Using crazyradio as a replacement for a vive tracker dongle

Post by tobias »

You probably ended up in a state were you can't launch the bootloader again, thus bricked state. You can however unbrick it by programming it over SPI e.g. with FTDI jtag or Raspberry Pi.
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