Someone built an app that drives the Steam Controller back to its charger

By: Anton Kratiuk | today, 19:10

Valve's new Steam Controller already screams when you drop it — now it can crawl back to its charger on its own. Developer Ray Foss built a free web app called Auto-Charge Tracker that uses a webcam and the controller's built-in haptic motors to guide the gamepad toward its magnetic dock. It's a proof-of-concept, not a polished feature, but it works well enough to be genuinely impressive.

How it works

The app runs entirely in a Chromium browser using the WebHID API, which lets websites communicate directly with connected hardware. A webcam positioned overhead watches the controller and dock. You manually mark their starting positions, then the algorithm tracks movement in real time using optical flow — the same computer vision technique used in action cameras to detect motion. When the app fires the right combination of haptic pulses through the controller's dual LRA (linear resonant actuator) motors, the controller inches across a surface toward the charger.

Foss admits the tracking can be finicky, and this is clearly a hobbyist experiment rather than something Valve engineered. But that's the point. The code is open-source and free to try — the GitHub repo has full technical details, and there's a live web interface you can load right now if you own the hardware.

Valve's open hardware pays off

This kind of community project is only possible because Valve has been unusually open with the Steam Controller's internals. The company released CAD files for the controller on May 6, 2026 — just two days after launch — under a Creative Commons license. The WebHID API support is also a deliberate choice, giving developers browser-level access to the hardware without needing platform-specific drivers.

The controller itself sold out in 30 minutes when it went on sale on May 4, 2026, priced at $99 in the US and £85 in the UK, per Dexerto. Stock has been tight since. The Auto-Charge trick joins an earlier community discovery — a hidden Wilhelm Scream sound that plays when the controller is dropped — as evidence that Valve packed more into this hardware than the spec sheet suggests.

Worth trying?

If you already own a Steam Controller and a Chromium-based browser (Chrome, Edge, or Brave), the app costs nothing to test. You'll need a webcam with a clear overhead angle and some patience with the calibration. Don't expect it to work every time — Foss is upfront that reliability is a work in progress. Think of it less as a shortcut and more as a window into what open hardware can do in the right hands.