SteamVR Utils for Linux

This project contains scripts to improve the functionally of SteamVR on Linux:

• Turning Base Stations (V1 or V2) on/off (via Bluetooth)
• Changing the audio output of games to the headset and back to the normal audio device

A daemon can start automatically with SteamVR (via launch options), once SteamVR is closed the Base Stations are turned off again. Alternatively the scripts can be executed manually.

• Currently, this is known to work with a Valve Index, V2 Base Stations and V1 Base Stations. Other headsets might work.
• For the Base Station component a Bluetooth device capable of btle (Bluetooth Low Energy) is required.
• For the audio component PulseAudio (more specifically pactl, which is installed by default) is required.

This project is not affiliated with SteamVR, Steam or Valve.

Install

Download:

git clone https://github.com/DavidRisch/steamvr_utils.git

Install dependencies (the last command is required for bluepy to run without root privileges):

sudo apt install pip3 libglib2.0-dev
sudo pip3 install bluepy psutil
sudo setcap 'cap_net_raw,cap_net_admin+eip' /usr/local/lib/python3.?/dist-packages/bluepy/bluepy-helper

Get launch options to configure SteamVr with and create desktop shortcuts:

./scripts/install.py

Usage

Depending on your setup some configuration (see section below) may be required before these commands work. Try out what works before changing the default configuration.

Start daemon automatically when SteamVr starts:

Follow the instruction returned by ./scripts/install.py.

Start daemon manually:

./scripts/steamvr_utils.py daemon

Turn Base Stations on and switch audio to the headset:

./scripts/steamvr_utils.py on

Turn Base Stations off and switch audi to the normal device:

./scripts/steamvr_utils.py off

Configuration

First make a copy of the default config file:

cp ./config/config_template.yaml ./config/config.yaml

If you chose a name other than config.yaml you will have to specify its location (--config argument).

The default config file contains explanations on each available field. Some config values are regular expressions (regexes), to get help with configuring them correctly see the output of:

./scripts/steamvr_utils.py config-help

For usage with V1 Base Stations some configuration is required, V2 Base Stations work out-of-the-box.

Acknowledgments

• Part of scripts/basestation_interface/v2_interface.py is based on a gist by waylonflinn.
• Part of scripts/install.py is based on a reddit post by Brunfunstudios .
• scripts/basestation_interface/lhctrl.py is copied from a repo by risa2000 under the MIT license.