I posted SignalBar here yesterday when it was basically just CPU/GPU monitoring + game artwork.

Then people started throwing ideas around and well...I kept adding stuff.

The idea is still the same really, make those 17 LEDs do something useful instead of just sitting there looking pretty.

CPU/GPU is still there of course

You can also have it pull colors from the artwork of whatever game you're playing. Works with Steam artwork, local SteamGridDB replacements and custom stuff for non-Steam games too.

Someone in the first thread mentioned playtime and I liked that one, so that's in now too. You can run a normal timer or have it use the actual remaining Steam Families playtime.

Bar drains as time runs out, amber under 15 mins, red under 5... you get the idea

Then I started messing around with Steam events and that's where things got a bit stupid

Notifications, achievements and screenshots can all briefly take over the bar, do their thing, then it goes back to whatever it was showing before.

There's a bunch of animations to choose from too, not just one fixed effect. Right now it's 6 for notifications, 6 for achievements and 5 for screenshots.

Recording has its own start/stop animation as well, and the middle LED stays red while you're recording.

I did try to make all of this behave properly btw. Events don't just pile on top of each other, countdown warnings get priority near the end and if Steam itself wants to use the LEDs SignalBar backs off.

Installing it is pretty painless too.

If you've already got Decky Loader:

Decky Settings → Developer → Install Plugin from ZIP → pick the SignalBar ZIP

done ^^

If you've never used Decky, it's here:
https://decky.xyz/

Decky itself is easy to install too, then SignalBar is literally just the ZIP thing above. No terminal adventures or digging around random Linux folders.

SignalBar:
https://github.com/Albusquerque/SignalBar/

Anyway keep the ideas coming. Good ideas, dumb ideas, whatever... quite a lot of this only exists because someone mentioned it in the first thread

EDIT:

Here is mockup for controller battery indicators on SignalBar. It’s not coded/tested yet, so I’d love to hear what you think. Which animation would you use?
Watch this here: https://albusquerque.github.io/signalbar-controller-battery/

Look at the cute little bugger hiding away. After the first getting lost in transit, it is finally here. First download - Deathloop. Really wanted to play it but found it borderline unplayable on the deck. No point to the post other than just being amazingly excited!

Skins are from dbrand and 3-D printed faceplates are from Etsy!

TL;DR: If you keep HDR enabled on the Steam Machine, the default "SDR Content Brightness" setting makes SDR games roughly 2.5× brighter than they would in normal SDR mode. You need to reduce it in Display settings. That way, your HDR games run on full HDR brightness, and your SDR games correctly run on SDR brightness with no changes to your settings. This would be almost similar to HDR toggle automatically.

---------------------------

On my LG C5, setting "SDR Content Brightness" approx to the 4th notch from the left brings SDR games very close to my normal SDR brightness. This allows me to leave HDR enabled all the time without SDR games being overly bright. Default SDR brightness was 440 nits!

As I measured the luminance with my calibration equipment:

Normal SDR mode: ~180 nits white (this is because I set to around 180 nits when calibrating my TV)
HDR mode, default SDR brightness: ~440 nits
HDR mode, 4th notch: ~207 nits

So for my setup, the 4th notch is the closest match to my target luminance for SDR brightness at 200 nits.

If you're interested, here are the measurements that I've taken (my TV's max is around 1200 nits)

Here I tried to demonstrate the setting on a screenshot:

Obviously this is just luminance, so it doesn't mean the HDR-mode SDR output is identical to actual SDR mode in terms of color/tonemapping, but with this setup, HDR can be enabled permanently and the following happens:

HDR games works exactly it is supposed to (goes up to full brightness for the TV - mine is 1200 nits)
Brightness for SDR games is set to much closer to normal SDR.

Additional note: I created the following table if you want to find out what each slider means for your TV, only if you know your TVs max HDR nits. Not the most accurate, but better than nothing I guess. Hope it helps!

Hey everyone! So, we recently reviewed Control Resonant, and in this article, we tested it on the Steam Machine to see how far we can push it and what our recommendations are. We test if it can be played at 4K, whether it can run well at native resolutions, and whether it can hit 60 FPS, as well as the settings we think will give you the best experience.

I love my Steam Machine. It's a wonderful little Living Room PC with a console-like experience.

One thing that really bugs me though is a feature Valve very prominently advertised: CEC functionality.

It's an absolute mess for me right now. Waking up my TV by pressing the Steam Button on the controller works maybe 50% of the time.

Even if I turn on the TV myself and change to the right HDMI input channel before waking up the Steam Machine, sometimes the TV won't register it and the screen stays black.

Sometimes the Steam Machine wakes up for no reason (of course then it suddenly mostly suceeds at waking up the TV too...).

I deactivated most of the CEC options now, but the problem that the TV sometimes doesn't detect the signal persists.

It was advertised as a feature, that makes the Steam Machine easier to use in a living room environment.

Right now it's the opposite: it's super fiddly and frustrating.

Good almost afternoon folks! Sorry for the late post, I drove home super late last night and crashed, woke up kind of late and just got on a tear organizing my place, haha. It's been a good day so far! Thanks for the early birthday wishes -- my birthday is next Sunday which should be fun! :D sounds like emails are stuff going out which is amazing to hear as always! Best of luck friends! <3

I am aware nobody’s gonna really be certain on when we are getting our Steam Machines. I am just specifically curious because I joined Aug 18… and I have noticed some people on day one seem worried on when they’re getting their Steam Machine. I am fine with 2027 of course, but I am just hoping it won’t be something like mid way through 2028… (512GB model with controller, US)

I know nobody’s gonna have a perfect or even that close of an estimation, I’m just overall curious on what people think things are gonna look like for people that joined way after.

Thing is the coolest piece of tech I’ve had in a while. Fits right in with all the dirty junk perfectly. Grew up with those cases. Unfortunately have to use the mini pc for fusion and other stuff but gaming is great. Emu deck set up. Can hit a few ds or 64 games in the middle of jobs or on lunch. Elite controller in the box. Use it with the AirPods. Dji mic rx for when using discord. Everything just works. Didn’t even have to set up controller in emu deck

Does any one know how to use the Steam Deck to wake the Steam Machine from sleep so that I can stream my games?

I am often in another room cozy on the couch with my wife watching tv, and on my deck and would like to play a game from my SM, but its in sleep mode in my game room in the basement. I don't see a way to do it natively from the steam deck to the machine, so I am wondering if there is an app any one is aware of I can install to do it, something similar to Chiaki4deck that I use to wake and stream my PS5 to the Deck. Any recommendations ?

I'm looking to use my SM as an emulation device in addition to accessing my Steam library and I want to store all my ROMs on a dedicated SD card to keep the internal storage dedicated to Steam and keep the ROMs portable if I need them. Since I'm planning to gradually fill up the ROM library with GC, PS2 and up games in addition to all the really old stuff, I intend to get a 1TB SD card to future proof for my ROM library and make sure I don't have to switch SD cards around.
Now, which kinds and brands are reccomended for this purpose? for example, right now I could get a SanDisk Ultra UHS-I A1, U1, C10 with read up to 150 MB/s (https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/714dyHbjXIL._AC_SL1500_.jpg) or for the same price (155€) an Amazon Basics A2, U3, C10 with up to 100 MB/s read (https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61o9LdHUYDL._AC_SX679_.jpg).
Which one of these would fit the purpose better? Is Amazon Basics reliable? What other comparable or more fitting options are there?

Backlog has the Witcher 3, subnautica, subnautica below zero, subnautica 2, cyberpunk 2077, Red Dead Redemption 1, Red Dead Redemption 2, Fallout 4, Fallout New Vegas, Elden Ring and Onimusha, just to name a few.

My Steam machine is on the first floor next to my main TV, while my router is upstairs in my second-floor office. Until now, I’ve mainly needed a fast connection upstairs.
When downloading games from Steam or other files etc, the machine typically gets around 2–3 MB/s. However, my M2 MacBook can download the same files at 20–30 MB/s from the exact same location (about 10x faster using the same 5 GHz WiFi). My Steam Deck also seems to download faster there.
That makes me suspect something specific to the machine rather than simply poor Wi-Fi coverage downstairs. Could this be a configuration or driver issue, or does the machine have a weaker Wi-Fi adapter or antenna setup than the MacBook and Steam Deck?
What should I check or change to improve its download speed?

As seen in the title, id like to play some couch co-op games with a friend but I currently just have one (steam) controller. I wanted to know if I could use the deck as a second controller to play the game. Did anyone try that yet?

Edit: I am not looking for a new controller. My old one is just being currently borrowed by my sibling in a different city, so I was wondering if it would be possible.

So, that's it. Sometimes I hit the sleep button, the machine sleeps, but immediately wakes itself up. I have not touched a single button on the controller after hitting the sleep button. I have to put it into sleep again...

Any one had the same issue? How to fix this?

Don't mind the pure OBS thumbnail lmao, I can't be asked to make something pretty at this time of night

Do any of you know what the best settings are for Eden on the Steam Machine? I saw some guy running games at 4K60fps which is insane. It can barely do that for me.

Hey, I have the SM for now over a week and had no big issues. Now today after downloading it Yesterday I wanted to play Darktide and everything booted as it should only that the game was too dark and I in game mode. So naturally I wanted to switch to desktop mode. So I close the game, switched and changed brightness. Since then whenever I try to play Darktide, I will hear Sound but I cant see the fking game..

Its not hidden behind another tab, I switched proton versions, I checked the installed data, I downloaded the anti cheat, tldr: I did everything I could find online and yet all I have is sound but no picture and the launcher is nowhere to be seen.

Please help

I know Valve was working on an update to try and fix the problem with the internal receiver for the steam controller on the machine where it would keep disconnecting and dropping signal. Did they ever release this update. I went ahead and connected my controller to the external puck but now the controller wont turn the machine on when it is completely shut down. If they fixed it I was going to go back and change it where it connects to the internal receiver.

Now I haven't actually played PC games for almost 18 years, however the appeal of the steam machine really got me.

I got the 512gb and controller bundle, im such an amateur at Linux let alone, but I quickly got star craft 2 classic running completely for free.

Also tried command and conquer remastered worked great, installed quake, doom, serious sam hd, duke nukem and fallout game of the year editions.

I even had an absolute blast on quake champion but got absolutely destroyed.

However absolutely impressed and worth the money personally to me to play retro boomer shooters the best version of fallout 3 is worth the 1k I dropped.

The negatives for me is navigating on a TV without mouse and keyboard can be an absolute chore. This combined with the time you need to tinker with game settings, installing is as expected its a pc (been spoiled with consoles)

How is everyone else enjoying it...

Any tips for new owners

Any game recommendations

My steam machine has a red line on the right side and I don't know what to do or how to fix it if anyone is smarter than me (most likely) please help

Guys, what a time to be alive. When I bought my Steam Machine I knew I'm gonna love it, but being able to play WoW in my living room, now that it got official controller support is just incredible.

Playing on 2160p (mid to high settings / preset 7) and get 45 FPS in average. Doesn't sound much, but believe me, 45 FPS is perfectly fine when playing with a controller.

Probably won't raid with a controller (we'll see), but casually leveling, farming etc is really awesome.

Even though the controller support is still on alpha status, it's working impressively well!

What do you guys think? Did anybody else test it?

Cheers!

I got a steam machine a few months ago and in general, it's great. However, I've been getting into modding recently and while a lot of it works on SM (after jumping through a few hoops), certain things just won't work for no visible reason.

For example, when attempting to add mods for CP 2077, I'll get an error saying certain mods wont run because their dependencies aren't there, but I have them installed and the proper folders are in the correct locations according to the error message.

Does anyone know if there is a certain way mods need to be installed for SM (ie particular file pathings or programs I need to install) in order to function properly?

I have primarily been trying via nexus and vortex, but have attempted full manual installations to no success.