So for the past couple of months, whenever I feel like playing VR, I do a trek around the room, turning on my HMD, then both lighthouses. While I'll still have to manually switch on my HMD, it turns out there's a simple script that takes care of the lighthouses, via bluetooth, it's awesome!

Now, I'm on Manjaro, but I think this will work pretty seamlessly on just about any distro, because it's all installed using pip/python, and in just two simple commands, which we'll later turn into a launcher.

The script we'll be using is this one:
https://gist.github.com/prefiks

But we'll modify it slightly according to one of the comments, so that we can create that launcher for it. One click = lighthouses turn on, click again = lighthouses turn off. Honestly, I've hardly had to use my legs this whole weekend!

Here's the steps for Manjaro, and also Mint, wherever Mint is different.

Step One
If you haven't already, install Python's PIP manager.

Manjaro - pacman -S python-pip
Mint - sudo apt-get install python3-pip libglib2.0-dev

Step Two
Open a terminal and install the dependency for this script
Manjaro - pip install bluepy
Mint - pip3 install bluepy

Step Three
Give yourself rights to run bluepy without sudo:
sudo setcap 'cap_net_raw,cap_net_admin+eip' ~/.local/lib/python3.8/site-packages/bluepy/bluepy-helper
(note that you might have a different path here, for example if you're only on Python 3.7. Just backspace and tab it out to the correct bluepy-helper executable)

Step Four
Download this script, save it somewhere safe, then execute with python:

#!/usr/bin/python3

from bluepy import btle
import sys

class DiscoLH(btle.DefaultDelegate):

    def __init__(self):
        self.devices = []
        btle.DefaultDelegate.__init__(self)

    def handleDiscovery(self, dev, isNewDev, isNewData):
        if not isNewDev:
            return

        isLH = False
        name = ""

        v = dev.getValue(btle.ScanEntry.MANUFACTURER)

        if v is not None and v[0:4] == b'\x5d\x05\x00\x02':
            print('Found LightHouse %s: address = %s' %
                  (dev.getValue(btle.ScanEntry.COMPLETE_LOCAL_NAME), dev.addr))
            self.devices.append(dev.addr)

if __name__ == '__main__':
    scanner = btle.Scanner()
    delegate = DiscoLH()
    scanner.withDelegate(delegate)
    scanner.scan(2)
    for device in delegate.devices:
        lh = btle.Peripheral()
        print("Connecting to %s" % (device))
        lh.connect(device, addrType = btle.ADDR_TYPE_RANDOM)
        if len(sys.argv) > 1 and sys.argv[1] == 'on':
            lh.writeCharacteristic(0x12, b'\x01')
        elif len(sys.argv) > 1 and sys.argv[1] == 'off':
            lh.writeCharacteristic(0x12, b'\x00')
        else:
            # toggle
            current = lh.readCharacteristic(0x12)
            if(current) == b'\x00':
                # turn on
                lh.writeCharacteristic(0x12, b'\x01')
            else:
                # turn off
                lh.writeCharacteristic(0x12, b'\x00')
        lh.disconnect()

I called mine vr.py and I ran it with

Manjaro
python vr.py

Mint
python3 vr.py

You can also force an option with
python3 vr.py on
or
python3 vr.py off
but if you run it without arguments, it's just a toggle.

That's pretty much it. I created a simple launcher, pinned it to my toolbar, and now whenever I click on it, my lighthouses toggle between powered up and powered down.

Hope this helps someone!

Last edited by scaine on 20 October 2020 at 11:03 pm UTC