The lighthouse beacon box (the thing you mount to your walls) is in fact not a sensor! It has an IR laser (at least I think its "lasers") pattern on a spinning head that is caused to sweep across your play space, and also encodes other data in the flashing of the IR beam. The older V1 Lighthouses were a little simpler but still cool.
The "sensor" is something with like ten IR sensor boards. They know their position on the device being tracked and will watch the patterns projected into the space to find their angle and distance to the 1-many lighthouse projectors you use. They can then get very very precise position deltas by using these measured values and comparing. Valve usually adds some sensor fusion and accelerometers, because I think the lighthouses only update at about 10hz? Valve or some partner actually sells the raw sensor boards for pretty cheap, but the integration is a little complicated and more expensive.
Valve also sells a completed, wireless, lighthouse compatible sensor device that integrates directly with the SteamVR software but it's like $100.
Sorry for over-explaining, sure you knew most of this already
The "sensor" is something with like ten IR sensor boards. They know their position on the device being tracked and will watch the patterns projected into the space to find their angle and distance to the 1-many lighthouse projectors you use. They can then get very very precise position deltas by using these measured values and comparing. Valve usually adds some sensor fusion and accelerometers, because I think the lighthouses only update at about 10hz? Valve or some partner actually sells the raw sensor boards for pretty cheap, but the integration is a little complicated and more expensive.
Valve also sells a completed, wireless, lighthouse compatible sensor device that integrates directly with the SteamVR software but it's like $100.
Sorry for over-explaining, sure you knew most of this already