TeaTimeServers
Plugins / Stream Deck / Deck Pets

Deck Pets: Rodents

Hamsters, gerbils, mice and rats in a cage that lives on your Stream Deck. Open it and it fills the deck: your pets potter about, run the wheel, carry food home and curl up to sleep. Keep them fed, watered and clean, stroke them until they are tame, and grow the cage. Leave them, and they die.

Getting started In testing
A Stream Deck whose top two rows show one cage across ten keys, behind bars: a striped dwarf hamster sitting at the door of a wooden house, a chew stick and a tube, a hamster beside the wheel, a hammock, a seesaw, a food bowl, a sand bath with another hamster, and a water bottle. The bottom row has Back, Food, Water, Clean and a More key.
A made-up cage on a Stream Deck. The gaps between the keys are part of the cage, so a pet walking across disappears behind the frame for a moment instead of jumping.

What you need

  • Windows 10 or 11 with Stream Deck 7.1 or newer.
  • Any Stream Deck: Stream Deck, Mini, XL, +, Neo or Stream Deck Mobile. Each gets its own cage, shop and pet pages.
  • Nothing else. No account, no internet connection, no setup.

1. Getting started

In testing. Rodents is being played on real decks before it goes to the Elgato Marketplace. This page will link to the listing when it is up. It is the second Deck Pets habitat, after Fish Tank.

  1. Find Deck Pets in the Stream Deck actions list and drag the Cage key onto any page.
  2. Press it. A new cage offers a line-up of six pets: press one to take it, or hold it to name it yourself.
  3. The cage then opens across the whole deck, with Back, Food, Water, Clean and More along the bottom row. By day your pet is probably asleep in its house: hamsters are like that.
  4. Press Back to return to your own page. The cage carries on without you, and the Cage key keeps watch.

Demo profiles

A ready-made page with the Cage key and the care keys for each Stream Deck. Download the one for your deck and double-click it to import it into Stream Deck.

2. Your first pet, and its name

A Stream Deck showing a line-up of six pets to pick from: hamsters, gerbils and fancy mice in different coats, each with its name and sex, and a key saying pick one.
A new cage offers six, a spread of the breeds it can start with, each in its own coat.
  • A new cage (and a cage you start over) opens this line-up instead of the cage. Press one to take it, and the cage opens.
  • The key beside Back shuffles: a press brings six others, a hold gives the six there other names.
  • Hold one of them to name it yourself.
A Stream Deck showing the naming page: the letters A to L on the keys, a done key with a green tick, a rub out key, and a corner key with the name so far.
Naming on the deck: the letters go on the keys, and the corner shows the name so far.
  • Press letters to spell a name, up to fourteen; the first letter of each word is capitalised for you.
  • The key beside Back rubs one out, and a hold clears the lot. The corner key turns to the next page of letters (a Stream Deck holds twelve at a time, an XL all of them).
  • Back keeps the name; hold it to leave the old one alone.
  • Any pet can be renamed later: press its card twice on Your pets. Or pick a pet and type a name in Stream Deck's own settings panel.

3. Looking after them

Five keys: Food with a nearly empty bowl, Water with a half-full bottle, Clean while cleaning with 'press the cage', Status at level 8 with 286 seeds, and Back.
  • Food fills the bowl and Water fills the bottle. On the Mini and the Neo, one Fill up key does both. Your pets eat and drink by themselves.
  • A well-fed pet carries spare food home to its house; you can see the hoard at the door. With the bowl empty, they eat the hoard, which buys you time.
  • Status shows your level, your seeds and whatever most needs you. When something has happened, it shows the news first, one line at a time.
  • More opens the page with the settings, a picture, the shop, your pets and the screensaver on it.
  • The Cage key's rim turns amber when something needs doing and blinks red when a pet is in trouble. A number in its corner is news you have not read.

A pet with no water is in trouble within a day; with no food, or in a filthy cage, a little longer. The keys warn you for hours before anything dies. While Stream Deck is closed, time passes at half speed for up to three days, and nothing dies of it.

4. Cleaning, one area at a time

Mess builds up across the cage floor at its own pace in each place: most by the house, the bowl, the wheel and in the corners, where real pets make it. You can see the droppings where they are.

  1. Press Clean. The cage keys get a dashed green outline.
  2. Press the cage keys where the mess is. Each one sparkles as it is cleaned.
  3. Press Clean again when you are done, or just leave it: cleaning stops after 15 seconds without a press.

Hold Clean to do the whole cage at once. A pet that has died is taken away when you clean where it lies.

5. Taming

Five keys from the pet page: a fancy rat's card with food and water bars, the same rat's details, a gerbil's card, a Roborovski hamster's card, and the roster of three pets.
  • Press the cage and an awake pet walks over to where you pressed, for a stroke. Little hearts mean it counted.
  • Strokes a few minutes apart make a pet tamer: shy, then getting used to you, then happy to be stroked, then hand-tame. Rats tame fastest, mice slowest.
  • Poke a sleeping pet and it wakes up grumpy, and a little less tame. A tame one wakes up for you instead.
  • Hold Status for Your pets: a card for each pet. Press a card for its breed, mood and tameness; hold it and press again to rehome that pet.

6. The animals

  • Hamsters: Syrian, Campbell's dwarf, winter white, Chinese and Roborovski. Syrians live alone; the dwarfs like company, and a Roborovski is lonely without it.
  • Gerbils are up by day as well as night and are happiest in pairs.
  • Fancy mice are tiny, quick and sociable.
  • Fancy rats are big, clever and very social. They need a friend, and a medium cage or bigger.
  • Different kinds never share a cage: the shop says so rather than letting you try.

7. Seeds, levels and the shop

Five shop keys: a gerbil for 40 seeds; a fancy mouse and a fancy rat, each marked as unable to share with the gerbils already in the cage; a tube and ledge for 35 seeds; and the wallet at level 7 with 286 seeds and room for one more.
  • Happy pets earn seeds and experience. Levels unlock new animals, toys (tube and ledge, sand bath, hammock, seesaw, chew sticks, soft bedding) and bigger cages.
  • Open the shop by pressing Status once the news is read, or by holding the Cage key or any part of the cage.
  • Press a shelf once to see it, and again within three seconds to buy it. Anything you cannot buy says why.
  • Lose every pet with no seeds left, and the shop gives you a Syrian hamster to start again.

8. Stream Deck + dials

A Stream Deck + whose eight keys show the cage, with a touch strip above the four dials showing Food, Water, Clean with a map of the cage floor, and Go with Cage, Shop, Pets and Back.
  • Food and Water: push or touch to fill.
  • Clean: the strip is a map of the cage floor, each area as dirty as it is. Turn along it (the cage keys light up where it points) and push to clean there.
  • Go: your level, seeds and news. Turn to pick Cage, Shop, Pets or Back, push to go there, touch to read the next news.
  • The Cage dial goes on your own pages: a live window onto the cage across the touch strip.

9. More, and the screensaver

A Stream Deck showing the More page: Settings, Snapshot, Screensaver and Status along the top row, Shop and Your pets below, and Back in the corner.
More: everything that does not fit around the cage.

The More key sits in the cage page's bottom row, and holding Back opens it from anywhere. On it:

  • Settings, Shop and Your pets, one press away.
  • Snapshot: a picture of the whole cage, saved to Pictures\Deck Pets and put on the clipboard. Hold it to open the folder.
  • Status: your level, seeds and the latest news.
  • Screensaver: the cage over every key of the deck, controls and all. Press any key to bring them back.

10. Settings

Five keys: two How to play cards about food and taming, two record cards about the cage and your care, and the Screensaver key.
How to play and Your record, a card at a time.
A Stream Deck showing the settings page: Mode set to Casual, Pet hours like real life, Day starts 07:00, Day ends 20:00, Across decks left to right, Smoothness 8 a second, the Pictures folder, a card of your record, and Start over. Back and the Shop key are along the bottom.
Hold Back for the settings page: one setting to a key, and a press changes it.

Hold Back on the cage page (or on the shop or pet pages) for the Settings page. Press a key to change that setting, hold it to go back the other way; the key beside Back carries on round to the shop. Everything here is also in any Rodents key's settings in Stream Deck, if you would rather.

  • Mode: Simulation, or Casual, where nothing dies. Casual changes nothing else: your pets still get hungry and thirsty, the cage still gets messy and the warnings still come, but a neglected pet only ever gets poorly. Switch either way whenever you like; it is kept with the cage.
  • Pet hours: like real life (busy at night), or swapped, so your pets are up while you are at your desk.
  • Day starts and Day ends: the hours the cage counts as daytime, anywhere from 05:00 to 23:00.
  • Across decks: with more than one Stream Deck plugged in, lay one cage across all of them, and your pets walk from deck to deck. Opening or leaving the cage then moves every deck.
  • Smoothness: frames a second on the cage page, from 2 to 15 (8 to start). Lower it if the deck or the computer feels busy.
  • Snapshot: takes the picture from here too; hold it to open the folder it went to.
  • Name a pet: pick one and type a name, if you would rather use a keyboard than the deck.
  • How to play: ten cards of the rules, a key at a time.
  • Your record: eight cards of how it has gone — the cage, your pets, where they came from, your care, seeds, the tamest, the oldest and how it is played.
  • Start over: hold it, then press again, and the cage is replaced by a new line-up to pick from, with 20 seeds. There is no undo, so it asks twice.

11. Your save

One cage is shared by every Stream Deck plugged in. It is saved every half minute and whenever you do something, to %APPDATA%\DeckPets\rodents.json, with a backup beside it, and it survives plugin updates and reboots. To start over, use Start over on the settings page, or quit Stream Deck, delete rodents.json and rodents.json.bak from that folder, and start it again. The plugin makes no network connections and collects nothing.

Frequently asked

Can I rename a pet?

Yes, and in two ways: press its card twice on Your pets and type the name on the deck, or pick the pet in any Rodents key's settings panel and type it there.

How do I get rid of the controls and just watch the cage?

Hold Back for More and press Screensaver: the cage fills every key of the deck. Any press brings the controls back.

My hamster is always asleep.

Hamsters, mice and rats sleep through much of the day. Set Pet hours to Swapped, or keep gerbils, which are up by day anyway.

Why can I not buy a second pet?

The shelf says why: the cage is full, a Syrian hamster will not share, different kinds cannot live together, or rats need a bigger cage.

Will my pets die while I am on holiday?

No. Time away can leave them hungry, thirsty and weak, but never kills them, and it stops counting after three days. Fill the bowl and bottle soon after you are back.

Something is still wrong.

Write to support@teatimeservers.ca with your Stream Deck model and what you saw.