Steam Deck

I didn't read the community name and thought this is about moderators preventing people spamming loss memes

Despite my best efforts I can't seem to find the article or post now, but I have definitely come across someone in the old subreddit that did basically what you're describing. They stripped an air tag down to bare minimum and hot glued it internally. They tried to use the decks internal battery for power, but it was throwing off battery draw enough to noticably impact the performance. I think they ultimately added a auxiliary button cell battery to power it, there was enough room in the case for this so it was still all internal.

I can’t talk to the hardware side, but from a software point of view it is unlikely to be possible to set up really any good tracking. The device doesn’t have a GPS, so you would have to rely on IP address location, which in turn would rely on the stealer setting up wifi on the deck without resetting it first.

It wouldn’t be hard to make the deck log the IP to an external server every time it connects to wifi, but it’s unlikely it would be very helpful. However, the deck could be set up to send more info, like nearby wifi networks, as well as a list of other devices on the wifi, which may help to locate it, but won’t be nearly as good as an airtag, or as if it had a GPS.

I recently read this article about AirTags, and this post made me think of it.

One of my main takeaways was that the anti-stalker features of AirTags are a bit of a liability for this use case. Imagine you successfully hide your AirTag inside the Deck, and a few days later it starts beeping. I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t stay hidden for long! Admittedly, you could potentially remove the speaker when installing it to prevent this.

The other thing I saw, which was a bit more worrying, was that the police were not really inclined to help, and took some prodding. They also got lucky that the stolen item was in a store they could just walk into. If someone steals a Deck and then takes it into their house, who knows if the police would even bother trying to get it back.

I feel like if the goal is to avoid the risk of theft, I would probably look into more physical security. Just keeping it on my person at all times when in high risk areas, potentially in a locking case?

https://github.com/seemoo-lab/openhaystack

I use a tile stuck inside my carry case, it's not fool proof but it works for someone quickly stealing the case