alt.hn

7/3/2026 at 10:39:50 PM

Steam Controller Auto-Charge – pilot to magnetic charging puck using CV

 https://github.com/FossPrime/Steam-Controller-Auto-Charge

by zdw

7/3/2026 at 11:32:36 PM

For those who can't decipher what this is, a video might be helpful. It literally crawls the controller along a tabletop using the haptic feedback motors: https://x.com/FossPrime/status/2070013003752251660

by jml7c5

7/3/2026 at 11:57:46 PM

Yea, interesting how this outs the README as AI Generated.

I don't think any human would ever write a sentence like this without first explaining THE FREAKING CONTROLLER IS MOVING BY VIBRATING

Proximity Creep Mode: Automatically cuts haptic pulse frequency by 50% when the controller is within 150 pixels of the puck to ensure a gentle magnetic dock.

by jdpigeon

7/4/2026 at 4:10:12 PM

Wow, that was better than I expected. I expected some janky “technically it is moving in the right general direction” thing but it scurries right along.

by bee_rider

7/4/2026 at 12:35:47 AM

AGENTS.md is fun too, solid AI bro stuff:

> Code like Anthony Fu and Evan You

> default to the highest quality modern code the legends would ship

What a time to be alive.

by fhd2

7/4/2026 at 5:08:49 AM

Code like the masters FU, You.

by rootsudo

7/4/2026 at 12:34:54 AM

But the intro paragraph does explain the project.

The person you responded to just points out how useful it is to see it in action.

by hombre_fatal

7/4/2026 at 1:21:27 AM

No? It says “pilots the controller” which is fairly vague of the cause and effects going on. I think a real human would clarify the controller motors being used to physically move the controller.

by clayhacks

7/4/2026 at 2:40:33 PM

What even is a "controller", it pilots the gamepad. Controller could mean the AR controllers, too.

by a3w

7/4/2026 at 2:36:13 AM

yes?

it says it uses the haptic motors like within 2 or 3 sentences, it says it 'slams the controller into the puck until it charges', it says it uses an overhead camera, and it even says that it navigates the controller to the puck using the motors and camera further down if you don't feel like taking the 3 seconds to connect the dots.

a video would've been nice, but I would've communicated this the same way and i'm not an llm, even if this thing may have been written by one, nor did I have any problem understanding the intent - not a brag, it just doesn't seem that strange to me.

by serf

7/4/2026 at 3:02:21 AM

Any human would have taglined this "vibrate to magnetic charging puck with computer vision".

It just feels horribly low effort. Respect your fellow man.

by jorvi

7/4/2026 at 8:27:23 AM

They put some code together and published it for all to use, with an MIT license, that lets a game controller wiggle itself over to a charging puck using computer vision. That's pretty neat.

If you want the documentation to be written to a standard that is more to your liking, then you're free to submit a PR or fork it -- or do just about anything else you want with it (including ignoring its existence).

Respect your fellow man.

by ssl-3

7/4/2026 at 12:38:14 PM

These are the weirdest criticisms. It seems totally normal to me for engineers to be bad at explaining their project to a lay audience. Whereas that's the kind of thing that LLMs are great at.

by stevage

7/4/2026 at 4:30:24 PM

Anyway, it’s a little free hobbyist project, right? Documentation is extra, not expected.

by bee_rider

7/4/2026 at 10:59:41 AM

No. I thought it meant the haptic feedback was for a human to make it easier to find the charger in the dark ir something.

by geon

7/4/2026 at 2:43:44 AM

It doesn’t say haptic motor anywhere. The only reference to how it moves in the whole thing is “internal dual Linear Resonant Actuators” which seems intentionally obtuse and even that is buried in the depths surrounded by a ton of unimportant detail.

by Gigachad

7/4/2026 at 2:56:54 AM

That's hilarious

by dmix

7/4/2026 at 5:38:20 AM

Nice keyboard

by isoprophlex

7/4/2026 at 12:50:57 PM

that's some walking-tape-drive-level shit

by conartist6

7/4/2026 at 5:17:24 PM

Alright, we're halfway through the Pantheon scene where David hacks the data center with the satellite phone.

Though, the phone moving with the vibration was always the more believable half. The ultrasonic pressing of the keyboard is mostly sound science but questionable from an engineering standpoint.

by eximius

7/3/2026 at 11:34:32 PM

Must be nice to be able to even buy a controller.

by Izmaki

7/4/2026 at 1:04:55 AM

Yup! I 'reserved' a controller May.15th and my estimated order availability is '2027'.

by soupbowl

7/4/2026 at 3:28:07 PM

I feel bad that I got mine just in time for my baby's birth so I'm several weeks into having it without playing any games! I need to see if I can use it for one handed gaming while cuddling.

by goda90

7/4/2026 at 2:37:30 AM

I got mine! Did the reserve list 10 minutes in a few weeks ago. I like it way more than I thought.

by zackify

7/4/2026 at 1:50:51 AM

That is odd. I did as well around the same time and mine shows September of this year.

by nirav72

7/4/2026 at 2:16:25 AM

They tried to limit scalping by randomizing the delivery order.

by int0x29

7/4/2026 at 7:31:06 AM

Very unpopular opinion: Scalping is the fair market price discovery - it is basically a requirement in free trade societies. Now, Valve has no interest in screwing up their users because of the AI hardware craze. But this is what happens if you reject free trading: You have to signup for a lottery to get something scarce/in high demand. No matter how hard you work in your daily life, the only way to get the scarce resource is being lucky in a lottery. Which raises the question, why would you work hard to create value for others in a system like that?

by littlecranky67

7/4/2026 at 10:14:36 AM

> Which raises the question, why would you work hard to create value for others in a system like that?

Because creating things for others is a fulfilling way to live your life, and creates a richer society.

Valve does not want to maximize revenue from the controller sales. If they did, they would auction the controllers. That would get rid of scalpers, and ensure each controllers is sold at the highest number the market would bear. They are not doing that, which implies revenue-maximization is not their goal.

My intuition is that they are trying to improve the health of the gaming ecosystem because that benefits their core business which is selling games. For them it's important that some people who are more price-sensitive get this controller. Because those customers buy different games than those who would pay top dollar, and those games are important to Valve. And because they promote gaming in ways that don't bring revenue directly but do create harder to measure value.

by Fargren

7/4/2026 at 3:42:42 PM

One might imagine a world, which would have to be populated by non-humans, in which we do price discovery for every transaction. Scalpers wouldn't exist: each batch of goods would be sold via Dutch auction.

I do wonder whether such a scheme might work for console launches — you put in the price you'd be willing to pay a scalper, and the batch you're allocated to is the first batch where the auction price is lower than your bid. Then you pay the auction price for that batch.

Faithlife do something with a converse price discovery function for book digitisation: you enter the amount you're willing to pay for the result, and if N people are willing to pay at least $COST/N, they do the work. No point in scalping that: it's a digital product, the question is availability rather than quantity.

In a world populated by humans, and with a mass-market good with restricted availability, there's a societal pressure to avoid enabling scalpers. Whether you act by yourself running some kind of auction, or by attempting to limit the ability of scalpers to buy in bulk, or by ignoring the pressure (and possibly running your own scalping operation to front-run the third-party scalpers), is up to you.

by andrewaylett

7/4/2026 at 11:57:24 AM

No, it’s just a case of the rich getting richer. Use your money to buy out the entire stock and then resell it for double the price. What value was added? It’s just the scalper taking the savings the seller intended to pass on to the consumer for themselves.

It adds nothing and makes the world worse for everyone else. It’s anti-social behavior.

by nkrisc

7/4/2026 at 6:22:18 PM

This right here. Scalpers are offering nothing, they are parasites in a functional capitalist system.

by robotnikman

7/4/2026 at 1:27:15 PM

You can't ignore the laws of economics and expect them to go away, any more than you can ignore the law of gravity and expect not to die when you make a high impact landing without equipment.

Just because you don't want them to be true, does not make them true, and you can't just dismiss them. In any system with scarce resources, some rationing mechanism must be at play. If it isn't price paid, it is something else like a lottery, who you're politically connected to, etc.

Sibling comment has it right. Valve is making a choice here. I think it's a better choice than raising the price personally. I detest scalpers with a burning hatred, but the way to combat that is to understand the economics behind why and how it works, not to ignore it and dismiss it with "the rich get richer"

by freedomben

7/4/2026 at 3:18:26 PM

These forces are reality, we all acknowledge this, but I think most of us object to their assertion it is good and drives towards FMV rather than distorts it.

Just because somebody disagrees with you doesn’t mean they don’t understand basic economics. You should be a little more charitable in your discussions.

by Forgeties79

7/4/2026 at 5:39:08 PM

I wouldn’t call scalping “good” necessarily, but in the case of the Steam Controller, I’ve seen an awful lot of people incensed about scalping whose commentary overpowers more interesting discussion in Steam Controller communities. I’m not convinced scalping is a huge problem for the Steam Controller, a few dozen silly‐priced Ebay auctions notwithstanding. Valve’s current solutions seem helpful to me, but I see outrage threads where people advocate DRM‐locking controllers to accounts to prevent resale, or enforcing price caps on sales, both of which are far worse than allowing scalping to exist, and does suggest some lack of economic understanding (since both “solutions” would simply make Steam Controllers harder to come by).

by bentley

7/4/2026 at 5:32:26 PM

You're right I probably should be more charitable, but I don't see any other way to read GP other than them denying basic economics. The comment that they were replying to did not say it was a good thing and they liked it. Sure it may have been implicit to some, but if GP was objecting to that, they should have used something other than the word no.

If they were responding to this part:

> why would you work hard to create value for others in a system like that?

Then their answer of no makes no sense, so I don't see a way to be much more charitable

by freedomben

7/4/2026 at 8:49:40 AM

Scalping still exists. They're readily available sealed in box for 2-2.5x retail.

For someone who will purchase at a scalped price, this has no impact. For a scalper, it reduces the likelihood of a guaranteed return. For someone who will purchase at an RRP it gives them an actual timeframe for delivery and lets them make an educated decision on whether they want to purchase for £85 in 6 months, or pay £200 on ebay and have it tomorrow.

Scalping removes one critically important part of FMV - the lack of duress. It's not FMV it's effectively a distress value.

by maccard

7/4/2026 at 3:52:04 PM

That may well not be scalping per-se, if scalping is the bulk purchase and resale.

I find it a lot harder to criticise folk who might well have used the controller themselves, at retail price, but upon discovering they've effectively paid 2.5x decide to put their controller onto the resale market.

by andrewaylett

7/4/2026 at 8:12:56 AM

> Scalping is the fair market price discovery - it is basically a requirement in free trade societies.

This explains why there is always a sea of scalpers milling around outside of every Costco in the United States, selling rotisserie chickens for as high as ten bucks after they bought them for $4.99.

It's basically a requirement, and it's a natural process of price discovery.

by ssl-3

7/4/2026 at 11:37:55 AM

> Scalping is the fair market price discovery - it is basically a requirement in free trade societies

It discovers who has the wealth to buy up multiples of something and create artificial scarcity which preys on humans emotionally/psychologically, or worse, denies them essentials. Then the buyers are primarily more people with more income who can afford to brute force solve the problem.

It’s parasitic behavior that generates no value. They barge in as unwanted middlemen driving up prices artificially. It’s net bad and does not establish any sense of “true” value. It just makes more things out of reach for more people that don’t need to be.

I don’t begrudge a hobbyist occasionally up selling something of theirs or whatever, but people who make a regular income stream off of inserting themselves as middle men do not deserve the benefit of the doubt or any sort of spin control. It is lazy, selfish behavior that purely exists to enrich them at the expense of people of lower means. It does not help the market in any way, shape, or form.

by Forgeties79

7/4/2026 at 2:40:51 AM

Is this due to ram?

by cryptoegorophy

7/4/2026 at 7:18:08 AM

Mostly not enough supply for the demand and scalpers. Mine is also with an "estimated order availability: 2027" with a reservation day of May 16

by NekkoDroid

7/4/2026 at 6:36:26 AM

Very cool. That controller has gyro and mic. Even more interesting solutions are available.

by brador

7/4/2026 at 10:43:31 AM

Are you sure about the mic ?

by choo-t

7/4/2026 at 12:57:21 AM

The neighbors hearing the vibrations at the end of the night everyday will not believe that’s your “auto guided controller!” to get charged.

by tamimio

7/4/2026 at 7:12:44 AM

The sound insulation at your place must suck.

by Hamuko

7/4/2026 at 9:01:17 AM

[dead]

by mv_d5339e31