In preparation for the upcoming Steam Link app release, the Steam Beta Client has been updated with support for the Steam Controller using a Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) mode.
Firstly, here's the changelog for the beta client:
Steam Input
- Enabled the Steam Controller BLE FW Update, for more information visit here.
- Added support for the NACON Revolution Pro 2 PS4 controller
- Added support for the PowerA Wired Controller Plus Nintendo Switch Pro Controller
- Improved software gyro drift correction
Diving into more detail in another post, Valve explained the new Steam Controller functionality. It's interesting, because it won't just enable the Steam Controller to link up with Android and iOS devices for the Steam Link app that's coming. It will also allow you to link it to say, a laptop, where perhaps you have no USB ports free for the wireless receiver or if you've broken/lost it.
It does require a firmware update for the Steam Controller, which is a simple process. When you load the Steam client from the latest Beta, it will come up with a prompt with a button to update when you turn your Steam Controller on. Warning: You will need to pair your Steam Controller again as this wipes it.
I tested it myself this afternoon and it will come up exactly like this:
It will then bring up a much bigger window, that will warn you about it needing to be done over a wired connection:
The process is a little dumb right now, as soon as I plugged the wire into my Steam Controller that window just vanished. Thankfully, Valve have thought about that and so there's this page which includes a link to force the update.
I had quite a lot of trouble getting my Steam Controller paired again after this, since it wipes it. If you also have the same issue, try unplugging the wireless dongle and then plugging it back in. Then re-try pairing, which made it work for me. And now here we are, all updated:
Once done, you can switch between the modes easily when turning the Steam Controller on. Simply hold down the Steam Button + A for the normal wireless mode and Steam Button + B for BLE mode.
Going a little further, I decided to test out this BLE mode on my laptop. Sure enough, it works! Paired okay after a few attempts of turning Bluetooth off/on:
It connects fine and with the Steam Client loaded and having the correct udev rules in place (see Valve's GitHub for them) it did seem to work:
Switching it between modes to test between my desktop and my laptop worked perfectly too. Connection on both was instant. Seems like this is going to make the Steam Controller quite a lot more useful. Good stuff from Valve here, really nice to see them continue to improve their hardware.
Thanks for the tip, pepster!
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Quoting: buckysrevengeQuoting: F.UltraStill sad that still in 2018 things get's completely wiped on firmware updates. Wouldn't it be nice if vendors of controllers, BIOS/UEFI, Smart TVs and so on would put the configuration on a separate memory location that didn't get wiped.It's not "completely wiped", it just is no longer paired. Once I paired my controllers, they had retained their personal settings (name, start up tune, etc.).
I'm also not having the "'A' cancelling out the pairing" problem. In fact, one of my codes was all A's and it worked fine.
Ah ok, good to hear!
Quoting: EikeQuoting: subFor me it would've helped quite a bit if they had included a slot for the dongle at the controller,
where you can put it when unplugged.
This one has it, but, even more so with shipping, might be a bit too expensive for such a feature:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/530970/Steam_Controller_Battery_Door/
Thankfully Valve released design files for the controller and utilities so you can 3d print it yourself if you want. There is also an alternative design for battery door with slide-in USB dongle holder.
slaapliedje May 13, 2018
Quoting: F.UltraStill sad that still in 2018 things get's completely wiped on firmware updates. Wouldn't it be nice if vendors of controllers, BIOS/UEFI, Smart TVs and so on would put the configuration on a separate memory location that didn't get wiped.
Speaking of wiping things...
I was all happy, booted into Linux, launched Steam, which I thought pulled in the new version, but it doesn't auto-restart itself, so when I turned on the Steam Controller, nothing. Restarted Steam, it then said there was a firmware. Started the firmware update, but it said I had to plug it in.
Plugged it in and... my hard drive went away. Now I'm creating a LiveCD to fix my Debian install.... looks like grub got completely borked!
Hopefully my drive still has data on it... it literally started popping up a bunch of ext4 errors.. :(
Quoting: PatolaAnyway, the downgrade is also really easy. Plug in the steam controller in your pc, mount it as a vfat controller, *dd* the firmware image over the old "image".Quoting: liamdaweI just tested, works as expected with SC Controller.Thank you very much!!!!
Edit: To be clear, that's in normal mode :)
To be clear: the vfat is not really a vfat, it is just a fake file system mapping to the real flash memory.
That's why you need dd, anything else might replace the file with a new file, which of course does not work.
Quoting: buckysrevengeIt's not "completely wiped", it just is no longer paired. Once I paired my controllers, they had retained their personal settings (name, start up tune, etc.).Actually they are, but these settings are stored with your user profile.
I assume that if you log in as another person, it will take the settings of that person for that controller, or that if you use your controller as an add on with another user (multiplayer game), it will use your name as second player. Something like that. There obviously is more information stored about your controller and you than has been agreed upon according to the GPDR.
slaapliedje May 14, 2018
Quoting: ArdjeQuoting: PatolaAnyway, the downgrade is also really easy. Plug in the steam controller in your pc, mount it as a vfat controller, *dd* the firmware image over the old "image".Quoting: liamdaweI just tested, works as expected with SC Controller.Thank you very much!!!!
Edit: To be clear, that's in normal mode :)
To be clear: the vfat is not really a vfat, it is just a fake file system mapping to the real flash memory.
That's why you need dd, anything else might replace the file with a new file, which of course does not work.
There is a roll back option in the controller configuration page of Steam BPM.
Quoting: slaapliedjeQuoting: F.UltraStill sad that still in 2018 things get's completely wiped on firmware updates. Wouldn't it be nice if vendors of controllers, BIOS/UEFI, Smart TVs and so on would put the configuration on a separate memory location that didn't get wiped.
Speaking of wiping things...
I was all happy, booted into Linux, launched Steam, which I thought pulled in the new version, but it doesn't auto-restart itself, so when I turned on the Steam Controller, nothing. Restarted Steam, it then said there was a firmware. Started the firmware update, but it said I had to plug it in.
Plugged it in and... my hard drive went away. Now I'm creating a LiveCD to fix my Debian install.... looks like grub got completely borked!
Hopefully my drive still has data on it... it literally started popping up a bunch of ext4 errors.. :(
I think this is one of the "don't confuse correlation with causation" situations. Unless it required you to be root I have a hard time seeing Steam being able to overwrite the MBR of your drive. Most likely is that there is some kind of problem with your drive that happened to show itself at that particular moment (perhaps the download of the firmware was the first time there where a write done on this particular partition for some time).
slaapliedje May 14, 2018
Quoting: F.UltraQuoting: slaapliedjeQuoting: F.UltraStill sad that still in 2018 things get's completely wiped on firmware updates. Wouldn't it be nice if vendors of controllers, BIOS/UEFI, Smart TVs and so on would put the configuration on a separate memory location that didn't get wiped.
Speaking of wiping things...
I was all happy, booted into Linux, launched Steam, which I thought pulled in the new version, but it doesn't auto-restart itself, so when I turned on the Steam Controller, nothing. Restarted Steam, it then said there was a firmware. Started the firmware update, but it said I had to plug it in.
Plugged it in and... my hard drive went away. Now I'm creating a LiveCD to fix my Debian install.... looks like grub got completely borked!
Hopefully my drive still has data on it... it literally started popping up a bunch of ext4 errors.. :(
I think this is one of the "don't confuse correlation with causation" situations. Unless it required you to be root I have a hard time seeing Steam being able to overwrite the MBR of your drive. Most likely is that there is some kind of problem with your drive that happened to show itself at that particular moment (perhaps the download of the firmware was the first time there where a write done on this particular partition for some time).
My theory is that it tried to mount the Steam Controller as a drive, and for some weird reason my BIOS decided that drive should be /dev/sdb (my Linux drive) because it acted exactly as if /dev/sdb had been unplugged. I ended up updating my bios there was a fairly recent update) and then doing the update again and it worked fine.
The thing is, clearly Steam doesn't have to be root to write the firmware to Steam Controller, it also doesn't have to be root if you have Linux set up to be able to mount USB devices automatically, which almost all desktop OS's are set up that way.
To be fair, it never actually got to the 'update firmware' stage, it gave an error that I needed to plug it in, I plugged it in, the dialog disappeared as did my system.. .for a time. Besides having to run grub-install /dev/sda and update-grub (after I got back into Debian to add Windows back to the boot loader).
Patreon
PayPal
See more from me