A recent Steam Controller update (possibly beta only update) added a second Bluetooth pairing slot, letting you pair two Bluetooth devices (just like how you can pair two pucks). To start the controller in the second Bluetooth slot, you turn the controller off, and then hold L1 + B + Steam to turn it back on (versus R1 + B + Steam for 1st BT slot, or R1/L1 + A + Steam for the two Puck slots).

That said, the main thing I wanted to talk about in this post is how happy I’ve been with my Steam Controller. I know it’s been overshadowed by the Steam Machine/Steam Frame, and there’s been supply issues/over priced, but it’s been a really great controller for me. I find it fits my hands really well, and I’ve been playing my Steam Deck docked a lot more since getting it.

The magnetic puck for charging works great, it’s been effortless to keep it fully charged between sessions. I’ve never really gotten to test the controller’s supposedly great battery life because it’s so convenient to charge. Having the track pass/gyro/back buttons has been great, I found myself missing them a lot when using other controllers. It’s also great having a controller with track pads for times I need to reply to a steam message or type something in a game.

I haven’t really used the grip sensors. I can imagine some uses for them in games where I want to use gyro without touching the thumbsticks/track pads, but realistically I haven’t encountered a game where that applied. I could also imagine using them to pause a game when I set down my controller, but that’s not really much of a need and I could imagine it backfiring. They’re an interesting tech but less useful than the capacitive sticks imo.

A minor inconvenience is that the waking up the steam deck via the steam controller (through the puck) seems to only work if the steam deck was connected to the puck before going to sleep. To get around that, I’ve paired the controller to my deck via Bluetooth as well, so I can swap to Bluetooth to wake it up, and then swap back to using the puck for latency/etc.

  • thingsiplay@lemmy.ml
    2·
    5 days ago

    I haven’t really used the grip sensors. … They’re an interesting tech but less useful than the capacitive sticks imo.

    I use both at the moment in two different modes for the same game, in combination with gyro control in Automobilista 2, a racing simulation:

    1. Gyro is ON by default mode: As long as the the left stick is touched, gyro stays disabled. So quickly touching the stick will recenter the gyro position. Or touch the stick constantly to take over control with the stick, in situations where using the gyro controls become awkward (especially in menus).
    2. Gyro is OFF by default mode: When I press on the left stick, the controller switches to a “gyro off by default” mode. Here gyro is only enabled, as long as both grip sensors are touched. If one of them is untouched, then gyro is off. Useful for navigating in menus, but on track controlling the car, its a bit awkward to have one side the grip sensor untouched, in case I want to take over to control with the stick.

    Still in experimentation phase, but looks like the stick method is more useful to me for this particular game. On the other side for other type of games where the stick isn’t used much, the method to disable or enable gyro by grip sensors can be very handy too. So which of the tech, grip sensor or stick sensor, are being more useful depends on the game.

    • Fubarberry@sopuli.xyzOPMEnglish
      2·
      5 days ago

      That’s pretty interesting, I hadn’t ever considered using thumbstick touch to disable gyro. I could definitely see an advantage there for having the grip sensor.

      • thingsiplay@lemmy.ml
        2·
        5 days ago

        I still need to figure out, when I’m in the menus and untouch the stick to control menus with the d-pad.

        In this situation the gyro is still enabled (in Mode 1 as described above). The problem is, we can only bind a single condition to when gyro is enabled or disabled. So we put any number of buttons to be touched or untouched, but the condition is defined by a single “untouch to disable” effect. That means I cannot have a separate rule with opposite condition for each key (enabled when untouched and disabled when touched).

        Hope this isn’t too confusing in reading. Simply put, there can only be one condition to enable or disable per mode. That’s why I have two modes, but have to switch between them right now. I thought about incorporating the second right stick sensor… but it started to get complicated.