Triad Semiconductor’s TS3633 enables cost effective deployment of Valve Corporation’s SteamVR™ Tracking System. The TS3633 is an integrated Light to Digital Converter. Working with a photodiode, the TS3633 converts infrared light pulses into position indicating digital envelope signals.

The TS3633 takes care of photodiode biasing and provides high gain, noise filtering and envelope detection of pulsed IR light sources. The ENVELOPE output of the TS3633 is a digital signal that tracks the envelope of the amplitude modulated (OOK or ASK) infrared light that is incident on the photodiode. The TS3633’s dynamic standby mode can greatly extend battery life of wireless tracked objects.

A SteamVR-compatible tracked object contains multiple TS3633 ICs plus photodiode sites distributed across the surface of each tracked object. Downstream electronics and software analyze the envelope pulse timing from each site to compute the position and orientation of a tracked object to within less than 1mm in a tracked volume spanning several meters using triangulation and tracking algorithms.