Conflicting Saitek vs. TrackIR USB drivers?

[JuMo]

Hello,

I'm a new customer, just received my TrackIR 5 yesterday. I think I might have run into compatibility problems with conflicting Saitek products and would like to know if there are any known issues with this combination. My box runs XP Pro and I have a Saitek AV8R Joystick with the Saitek keyboard macro software installed. Saitek also installs a new device class in dev mngr, 'Saitek Magic Bus'. This has always worked fine.

The TrackIR installed without problems using both v4 and v5 software, but I later noticed that the Saitek profiler software (their keyboard macro software for that stick) had stopped communicating with the joystick. The stick and all those saitek devices were still present in device manager, the saitek process was running (but wouldn't show its gui), but there was no functionality whatsoever. I then reinstalled the saitek software, and voil�, saitek was working again, but guess what, now TrackIR wouldn't find the camera anymore. Actually the camera had even disappeared in device manager.

In the end, I somehow managed to get it working by unplugging the camera, putting it back in, uninstalling TrackIR, reinstalling TrackIR .. but really, it doesn't feel very reliable at all. I fear that any future update, or even a disconnect/reconnect of either the TrackIR or the Joystick may again disable one of the two.

What is the root cause here? Conflicting inf files maybe? driver conflict? Any workarounds or even fixes?

Oliver

[VincentG]

Are they plugged into USB ports next to eqach other?

Is the stick software mapping hotkeys, that could be in conflict with the TrackIRT hotkeys as well?

[JuMo]

The TrackIR is connected to a hub. My logitech G15 keyboard is connected to the same hub. Lastly, the Saitek Stick is connected to the logitech G15 hub. So they're not on adjacent USB ports, but on the same usb bus chain, going into the same root hub in the end.

The stick software has no hotkey mappings that are in conflict with the TrackIR hotkeys. They live happily together now (for the moment). While the problem persisted, the TrackIR had disappeard from device manager, so this gives me the idea it's a usb id/inf/driver thingie and not something that happens on the application level.

Something else: The V5beta software reliably dies horribly on launch if windowblinds is present. I added an exception for it in windowblinds and now they coexist peacefully.

Regards,
Oliver

[VincentG]

What type of USB hub are you using?

[JuMo]

The TrackIR camera is connected to an active USB 2.0 hub providing 500mA to each port, devmgr says the TrackIR cam is drawing 366mA. This hub is integrated in my TFT monitor.

The hub inside the G15 keyboard that the joystick is connected to is a passive USB 1.1 hub. This hub's uplink goes to the hub described above.

Both hubs work ok, never had any problems with device recognition or insufficient device power with either of them.