PSMove Bluetooth Pairing
Before you can receive data from the PS Move, it must be paired to a bluetooth radio. Every bluetooth radio has a MAC address of the form: "xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx". Both the bluetooth adapter and the PS Move controller have their own unique MAC addresses. Pairing the controller means registering the MAC address of bluetooth adapter in the PS Move controller, which is done when the PS Move Controller is connected to a PC via USB. The PSMoveConfig tool is used to walk you through the pairing process.
First, make sure you have a bluetooth adapter installed on your PC. I've typically used the ASUS-BT400, but that specific adapter isn't a requirement, I've just had good luck with it.
- Plug in the ASUS-BT400
- Let Windows recognize it
- Install the bluetooth driver that comes on the CD (On Win10 the native drivers that get auto-installed appear to be all you need).
- There should be a bluetooth icon that shows up on your task tray
- Make sure PSMoveService is running if it isn't already (can confirm by going to the Task Manager)
- Launch the PSMoveConfigTool
- Open the "Controller Settings" menu. You should see an empty list and the MAC address of your bluetooth adapter.
- Plugin the PSMove controller you want to pair. The menu should refresh and present you with an option to "Pair USB controller".
- Once pairing begins, you should see a progress bar appear. Disconnect the controller from USB and press the small PS button in the middle of the controller. You should see the small red LED on the bottom of the controller start to flash. Hopefully the progress bar will also start increasing at this point. If the red LED stops flashing, just press the small PS button again. Progress may jump backwards a few times as the bluetooth pairing may need to restart. You can thank the Windows Bluetooth stack for this janky pairing experience.
- If pairing completed successfully, the small red LED should now be solid and you'll be back at the controller list with a list of details about the controller.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Every time you return to this controller list screen it will revert to controller 0. If you are using multiple Move controllers then you need to click the right arrow to move to the relevant controller before continuing. You need to do this every single time you are on this screen!
- You only ever have to pair a controller to a bluetooth adapter once (ever). If you unplug the bluetooth adapter or restart your machine the PS Move will disconnect and the red LED will turn off. Simply press the PS button again and it will reconnect to your PC, no re-pairing needed.
If you are pairing a newer model PSMove controller with the Micro-USB port (the ZCM2 version for the PS4) there is an additional authentication process that happens. While the pairing occurs you might see the following window popup:
Click on that. Hopefully that will bring up this window:
Select "Allow" from that window. Whether this process succeeds or not tends to be timing dependent. But after enough tries it has always worked for me.
- If the red light stays on but the pairing progress bar gets stuck, turn off the controller by holding down on the PS button for 5-10 seconds until the red light goes off. Then cancel pairing process and retry it.
- If you can't seem to get the pairing to get the red light to stay on, cancel the pairing process, close PSMoveService, then try pressing the PS button again. This sometimes brings up the windows "Pair Device" window again. Click "Allow". This usually wont stick, but I've found this makes the pairing process in the config tool work the next time I try.
When you first connect the PS4 controller is grabs some calibration data from the controller. Part of data is the gyro drift calibration. The drift values tend to be pretty close to what they should be, but you can do better by manually recording how much the gyro will drift over a period of time.
After you have the PS4 controller connected, go to the controller settings window and launch the "Calibrate Gyroscope" tool:
If you want to pair the controller to a new PC you should unpair the controller first. Simply plug the controller you want to unpair into USB. The "unpair controller" button should appear. Once the controller is unpaired you should see the red LED turn off.
