Steam Deck owner rigs a taser to stop family from touching his console

One Steam Deck owner got so sick of family draining his battery that he engineered a defense system to fight back.

Every shared household gadget breeds its own resentment, the kind that flares up when someone drains the battery right before your turn.

Steam Decks also got pricier to replace this year, after a rocky restock brought a steep price hike, which might explain why a password stopped feeling like enough. This user decided to dial up his Steam Deck security by turning his Steam Deck into a taser.

Spikes, a taser and zero patience for freeloaders

Reddit user ConroyyJenkinss posted the build on r/SteamDeck under the title ‘I Built a Security System for My Steam Deck,’ a description that left out the taser bit entirely.

As for how they actually pulled it off, they started by modeling a spiky orange case in Blender, then 3D printed it so the console became too uncomfortable to pick up without flinching. From there, they wired a Raspberry Pi to a small speaker and an object detection camera, then coded a script that played a jarring audio clip whenever someone wandered into frame. If the intruder lingered too long, a servo motor triggered a taser mounted on top of the deck.

“I got sick of my family always draining my Steam Deck’s battery,” ConroyyJenkinss explained. The whole rig, they said, “minimises the risk of them touching my Steam Deck at all,” since relatives are now “forced to ask for permission.”

Disarming the taser and prying off the spiked case just to play a round themselves is, in ConroyyJenkinss’s words, “a hassle but overall worth it.” When someone suggested just hiding the console instead, they shot it down and joked their family is “very good at hide and seek.” As for how things stand at home now, ConroyyJenkinss reported being thrilled with the results, even if the rest of the household was considerably less happy with the console’s sudden hostility.

Valve probably wouldn’t endorse turning its hardware into a weapon, though the company has shown real warmth toward Steam Deck owners before, like the dad who got a free replacement case after his newborn ruined the original.