SteamVR Base Station

The SteamVR Base Station integrationIntegrations connect and integrate Home Assistant with your devices, services, and more. [Learn more] lets you control Valve Index base stations over Bluetooth Low Energy.

Use cases

  • Put the base stations to sleep at night or when nobody is home, so their motors and lasers don’t keep running.
  • Wake the base stations when your gaming PC turns on, so they are ready when you put on the headset.
  • See at a glance whether a base station is on, booting, in standby, or asleep.

Supported devices

  • SteamVR Base Station 2.0, as used with the Valve Index

Unsupported devices

  • SteamVR Base Station 1.0, as used with the original HTC Vive

Prerequisites

  • A Bluetooth adapter or ESPHome Bluetooth proxy that supports active connections.

Configuration

To add the SteamVR Base Station device to your Home Assistant instance, use this My button:

Manual configuration steps

If the above My button doesn’t work, you can also perform the following steps manually:

  • Browse to your Home Assistant instance.

  • Go to Settings > Devices & services.

  • In the bottom right corner, select the Add Integration button.

  • From the list, select SteamVR Base Station.

  • Follow the instructions on screen to complete the setup.

Base stations in range are discovered automatically.

Device

Select the base station to add. Its name (LHB-…) is printed on the back of the station.

Supported functionality

Binary sensor

  • Problem: On when the station reports a fault.

Button

  • Identify: Blinks the station’s LED white for about 20 seconds, to tell stations apart.

Selects

  • Power mode: Switches the station on, to standby, or to sleep. From standby it is back on in about a second, from sleep in about 11 seconds. Standby is hidden on firmware that lacks it.
  • Channel: The station’s tracking channel, from 1 to 16. SteamVR normally assigns channels itself, so only change it to fix a conflict. Disabled by default.

Sensors

  • Power state: Whether the station is on, booting, in standby, or sleeping.
  • Signal strength: The Bluetooth signal strength of the station’s last broadcast, in dBm. Disabled by default.

Switch

Each base station has a switch named after the station. Turn it on to wake the station. Turn it off to put it to sleep, which stops its motors and lasers.

SteamVR Base Station automation examples

Tip

You don’t need to edit YAML to use these examples. Copy a YAML snippet from this page, open the visual automation editor in Home Assistant, and press Ctrl+V (or Cmd+V on Mac). Home Assistant automatically converts the pasted YAML into the visual editor format, whether it’s a full automation, a single trigger, a condition, or an action.

Automation: Put the base stations to sleep at night

Make sure the base stations are asleep at night, even if you forgot to turn them off.

  • Trigger: Time: 01:00:00
  • Action: Turn off switch
    • Target: Your base stations
YAML example for putting the base stations to sleep at night
AutomationAutomations in Home Assistant allow you to automatically respond to things that happen in and around your home. [Learn more]
alias: "Put the base stations to sleep at night"
triggers:
  - trigger: time
    at: "01:00:00"
actions:
  - action: switch.turn_off
    target:
      entity_id:
        - switch.lhb_747a9bc5
        - switch.lhb_5e72f725

Data updates

The base stations broadcast their power state and channel over Bluetooth, so Home Assistant updates the entities without pollingData polling is the process of querying a device or service at regular intervals to check for updates or retrieve data. By defining a custom polling interval, you can control how frequently your system checks for new data, which can help optimize performance and reduce unnecessary network traffic. [Learn more]. Connections are opened briefly to read device information during setup and when the integration loads, and to send commands.

Known limitations

  • Each command opens a short Bluetooth connection, so commands are not instant. The Bluetooth adapter or proxy needs a free connection slot, or the command fails.
  • A base station takes about 11 seconds to come back on from sleep. If you need the stations ready right away, use standby instead, which takes about a second.

Troubleshooting

Symptom: setup or a command fails with a connection error

Resolution

Make sure the base station is within range of a Bluetooth adapter or proxy with a free connection slot, then try again.

Diagnostics

The diagnostics download includes the station’s device information, its last known state, and the raw data of its last Bluetooth broadcast, which can help developers reproduce issues without access to the hardware. The station name, serial number, and Bluetooth address are redacted. Attach the downloaded file when reporting an issue. For more information, see Download diagnostics.

Removing the integration

To remove an integration instance from Home Assistant

  1. Go to Settings > Devices & services and select the integration card.
  2. Next to the entry you want to remove, select the three dots menu. Then, select Delete.
    • Depending on the integration, the entries are listed under one of the following headings:
      • Devices
      • Hubs
      • Services
      • Integration entries
  3. To confirm, select Delete.
    • Home Assistant also deletes the devices and entities of the entry.
  4. If Home Assistant asks you to restart, restart Home Assistant.
  5. If Home Assistant asks whether to also delete the application credentials, select Remove or Keep.