Package theft a problem many of us have experienced with the increase of home deliveries we get these days. Engineer Mark Rober is no stranger to this. A shipment had been delivered, but when checking his porch there was nothing. Security footage revealed someone stealing his delivery, and he had no recourse. What’s a rocket scientist supposed to do? Get some over-engineered revenge, that’s what.

It took six months to design and build, but Mark and his friends created the perfect booby trap. It is a compact unit disguised as an Apple HomePod. The most important part is the spinning cup on the top which contains a large amount of super-fine glitter. When activated, it throws glitter in every direction to make a truly bad day for package thieves. Glitter is the gift that keeps on giving after all. Oh and there’s also a can of fart spray that gets activated. So the criminals usually throw it out of a car window and then Mark can retrieve the device.

This package sits on the porch until an accelerometer detects movement. Then GPS checks to see if the package has traveled outside a geo-fence around Mark’s home. Then a signal is sent to the four smartphones inside of the package to start recording, and then deliver the glitter payload. The fart spray keeps triggering every 30 seconds to increase the chances they’ll dispose of the package. Now that’s an impressive engineering job.

You can see it in action several times in the video. These porch pirates will think twice before they steal another package.

[via Hackaday]