Pimax Crystal power, and battery swap

[heloguy]

Fishing for others experience here, as an hour of searching has left me with conflicting answers, mostly buried in endless Reddit posts.  For reference, I run OpenXR, and Quad Views with eye tracking turned on for the performance boost.

 

I've had my Crystal for a few months now.  When I first received it, I watched this video:  

 

If you watch at 2:38, there is now a voice over that wasn't there the first time I watched it.  Originally, the video explained that you ONLY plug in the blue USB 3.0 plug if using the provided USB hub, which I am.  The video furthers specified that the USB 3.0 plug must be plugged in on the side as he demonstrates.  Now, there's a voice over that specifies that the USB 2.0 is OPTIONAL, but if used, must be plugged into the provided USB hub.

 

I ran the Crystal for awhile according to the original video (only the USB 3.0 cable plugged into the hub).  When I attempted a battery swap during play, I followed these instructions:  short press the power button, wait for the screen to turn off (almost immediate), then swap the battery within 60 seconds, and press the power button to turn the screen back on.  I conducted the swap within about 10-15 seconds, as I had the new battery waiting.  Almost as soon as I removed the battery, the headset shut down.  I could hear it disconnect from my PC.  DCS froze.  Once the new battery was in, I short pressed the power button, and saw the screen turn on.  When I put on the headset, I could see only a battery icon, indicating a full charge.  Further short presses of the power button did nothing, and Pimax Play indicated that the headset was not connected.  I long pressed the power button to turn the headset back on.  After about 10-15 seconds, my computer crashed, and conducted a hard reset.

 

After the above episode, I had a fellow DCS player tell me that you are supposed to run both USB cables plugged into the hub (not sure where he received this information, but as we can see in the above video, it's optional now, so shouldn't hurt, right?).  I've been running this for a couple months.  In that time, I've attempted a battery swap twice using the same procedure I outlined above.  The only difference is that I have both USB cables plugged into the provided USB hub.  The first time ended with DCS crashing.  The second time ended with another computer crash, and hard reset.

 

At this point, I'm trying to confirm two things:  the correct/optimal connection process using the provided USB hub, and the correct battery swap process that will result in me continuing to play DCS.  I have already submitted a support ticket, and will report back here when I get some guidance, but again, just wanted to start a conversation here, and see if anyone else has experience with this.