Last month, Vavle opened Lighthouse tracking technology to third parties. As long as it is authorized by HTC, developers can develop peripherals and hardware compatible with Vive. In the past month alone, Lighthouse has captured a large number of fans. And now, this degree of openness has been extended to the chip level, the first one to eat crabs is the United States chip company Triad Semiconductor.

A few days ago, Triad Semiconductor announced that it will sell Vavle certified specialized Lighthouse sensor chips later this month. Reid Wender, Triad’s vice president of marketing, said that the chip has been certified by Valve to convert photodiode input signals to data that is useful for SteamVR tracking algorithms.

The chip, called TS3633, integrates the sensors needed for SteamVR and is a small "light-to-digital" integrated circuit. It receives input signals from photodiodes (as small sensors distributed over the HTC Vive) and converts them into useful data that can be used by the SteamVR tracking algorithm.

This is Valve's idea. Together with Valve, we define the functionality of the chip. Valve has a powerful algorithm team that not only conceives fantastic ideas but also puts them into practice. Valve hopes to apply tracking technology to a wide range of applications, from VR to robot control.

Reid Wender said.

It is understood that the price of this chip is 0.92 US dollars, if the order reaches 1000, the unit price will be reduced to 0.49 US dollars. Because Lighthouse helmets not only need sensors, they also need photodiodes and some other components. So Triad made the TS3633-CM1, which integrates the TS3633, photodiodes, and resistors. The time to market for this product is also at the end of this month.

1. Multiple light to digital sensors (photodiode +TS3633). Typically, there are 20 to 32 sensors. The small number of sensors can be used in "lightweight" tracking applications.

2. A digital functional block for aggregating the envelope signals of each TS3633. The current system uses an FPGA that can support up to 32 sensor inputs.

3. An Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) whose positioning information can be combined with light-to-digital angle information.

4. A microprocessor, which takes data from the FGPA and inertial measurement unit to form a data packet. It is then sent to the host processor (a computer that is currently a Windows or Linux system) via a USB or proprietary 2.4 GHz connection.

5. The main processor runs SteamVR software as the "positioning engine" and it calculates the position and direction of the object being chased.

It can be predicted that with the launch of third-party sensor solutions, there will be a large wave of Vavle helmets on the market.

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