forums.naturalpoint.com

Hi guys! First off, congratulations on a nice product, this one's a little gem!

I have, however, a problem, and hope you can give me some pointers.

I recently acquired the trackIR5 for use with DCS-A10. I also use the awesome thrustmaster warthog joystick and throttles, and the proflight rudder pedals. (only other peripherals are keyboard and mouse)

Installation and setup all go smoothly, I use my own custom profile and everything works perfectly in game... until after a random time (ranging anywhere from 4 minutes to 40) trackIR suddenly stops responding. The lights on the device stay in the exact same position as they were in before the freeze, and if I alt-tab and have a look at the naturalpoint software, everything is still indicating normal- except that it no longer moves at all. No error messages or anything, the shortcut keys don't respond, just rock-solid frozen. The game itself isn't even aware anything's wrong and runs as it should.

Even more interesting: I have the trackIR connected to a new USB hub. Whenever it freezes, everything else that's in that hub with it, freezes too. I've tested this with just the mouse, just the throttle, both throttle and joystick, and they all lock up- the lights on the throttle go off.

If I disconnect the devices from the hub, and plug them back in, they work again. TrackIR also resumes normal operation, but of course it's no longer linked properly to the still ongoing game session and only the left led will light up.

Curious, no? I have tried installing the last two 5.x versions, and the latest 4.x version. All have thesame problem. The freeze even happens when NOT in game. The random nature of the problem makes it difficult to track down though.

I only have two USB ports on the back of the computer and thus need to use a hub. The keyboard has two ports aswell, but lack the power to run trackIR.

Because the problem affects the usb hub aswell, I'm half suspecting a usb problem. Perhaps data input overload? Power should be fine- the hub is externally powered and the power led on the hub relentlessly mocks me with its presence.


System:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual core 4000+ 2.09 GHz
4.00 GM RAM
32-bit VISTA system (yes, running DCS in 32bit)
ATI Radeon HD 3800 series graphics card

It doesn't sound like a data issue, it's likely a power issue. If at all possible, could you try plugging the camera in directly to the computer and everything else in through the usb hub plugged into the other slot?

If it works in this configuration, it may be worth looking into getting more usb ports added to the computer via an expansion card.

First off, thank you for a speedy reply, I got to rewiring that very first day.

Alas I lacked the time to test it for longer periods of time, but so far it seems to have done the trick!
That setup was very clumsy wire-wise though, so I adjusted somewhat:
The keyboard is now plugged into the pc, as is the camera. The keyboard serves as a hub too (with two ports) so the usb hub is now plugged into the keyboard, as is the mouse. Everything else goes into the hub.
That setup did equally well.

Never thought a hub in a hub would work well, but it's looking good. One thing to note though-

In the original setup when the problem occured, the usb hub power led remained on constantly. So while your suggestion is completely logical, I'd think the power led would do something other than continue to shine merrily. Perhaps I'm actually dealing with a faulty hub. (It supposedly can supply 500 mA, the cam only takes a good 350)

Anyway, it seems to be sorted, thanks! I'll update when I had the time for a longer test.

On a sidenote, it's pretty bloody sweet, running DCS-A10 with the trackIR and the warthog joystick.

It's a possibility that the hub provides a mean of 350mA but has peaks and valleys that break up the power.

Also, you can have up to 128 addressable devices in a single USB host controller (127 plus the computer itself) so theoretically you can chain them as deep as you want!