The Parkside range of tools as sold in European Lidl stores may be reasonably priced, but it contains some products of far better quality than their modest cost would suggest. This means that Parkside hacking has become as much of a cottage industry as IKEA hacking, and they’re a firm favorite for modifications. [Lambertus] has taken a Parkside robot mower, and converted it from a relatively mundane device to a fully-connected smart robot, with the aid of an ESP8266.
The hardware is surprisingly simple, as all that’s really needed is a stop/go command. This can be readily found by hooking up to the input from the mower’s rain sensor, allowing the ESP to control its operation. Then there’s an accelerometer to allow it to count motion, and a hookup tot he battery to measure voltage. The firmware uses ESPHome, resulting in a mower now connected to home automation.
This isn’t the first time we’ve shown you someone upgrading the smarts on robot mover, and of course we’ve also taken a tour through the history of lawn mowers in general.
> The Parkside range of tools as sold in European Lidl stores may be reasonably priced, but it contains some products of far better quality than their modest cost would suggest.
Citation needed.
> This means that Parkside hacking has become as much of a cottage industry as IKEA hacking, and they’re a firm favorite for modifications.
(Citation needed)²
DDGing for “Parkside hacking” (without the “) returns basically nothing.
At most a handful of HaD articles and a few HaD.IO projects….
Lidl recently sold a 3s2p battery pack for the 12V line of tools for ~5€ – but only with their f§%/&%*/ing Lidl app. The normal price was more like 20€? Still okay-good for 6 Li cells.
Played with the idea of trying to modify a few old 12V NiCd Makita handtools from ~18 years ago. Cutting out the hollow handle shaft a little bit to make the new ones fit…
Or hack the old batteries and replace the 10 NiCd cells with 6 normal 18650 cells. 5 do fit in the old housing without much modification – a 6th only fits with a few bits “outside” (holes drilled through the old housing to make them fit).
The trick of selling underpriced hardware and forcing you to use an app, seems like a standard Chinese strategy. I hope it’s just to harvest your data and not some clever plan to have IoT control all over the world when geopolitical tensions rise to a hight where offensive cyber-actions are an option.
Oh, and
> converted it from a relatively mundane device to a fully-connected smart robot, with the aid of an ESP32
it’s clearly an ESP8266 on the photo (and as stated in the github).
The app is for the discount, not for the battery.
Parkside has “smart” batteries yes, but you don’t have to use app with them (but why buy a smart battery than? personally i don’t see any value in this “smart” and they are more expensive).
The lidl app is for the discounts – sort of like coupons in USA, or loyalty cards but with an app.
Re: ESP32 / 8266. Fixed, thanks!
Author may be confusing Parkside with Silvercrest, one of the other Lidl house brands. Do a search for “lidl hack” and you’ll find many more of those than for Parkside hacks.
I can vouch for the US version of the Silvercrest remote electrical sockets. They are my favorite way of controlling Christmas decorations around the house (inside). I liked the first 4-pack so much I bought a second for spares.
Yeah, “Silvercrest hack(ing)” delivers relevant search results and makes a lot more sense – thanks for clearing that up. :-)
Plus one! Mine from lidl is used only for Christmas decs but it works great with home assistant. I would but another if I saw it. They were short lived here in UK I think.
Having tried some of their products (neighbor bought some), I can say with confidence: Parkside is trash. Neighbor had to throw out multiple tools that stopped working after less than 1 hour of use.
That’s the thing with parkside – there are things that are exceptionally good for the price and than there are complete trash – and there is almost no way to tell in advance. And you need to pay attentin to the versions as well.
For example their stick welder PISG 120 B3 (discontinued) was exceptionally good (the version before was trash), but their current offering PISG 120 C4 and PISG 120 D5 are completely different products and are the standard “cheapest possible” Chinese inverters in green color – so kind of trash.
I like Makita – what tools i care about i buy Makita, and what i kind of don’t (like air compressor i use once or twice a year) i get parkside and use adapters from Makita batteries.
Of course if you buy Prakside and use it on construction site, it will most likely not last a day or two – it’s not fit for that purpose – they are tools you use couple of time a year – and the price fits that use case i think.
Dean Doherty has stripped a couple of parkside tools, he repairs them for a living so it’s not fluffy bunny stuff. He’s on YouTube.
I have an entire collection of Parkside tools and 12 batteries. I use my angle grinder and hand drill every single day. The glue gun is used very often and the reciprocating saw has seen some abuse. I got several other tools I use less. Only problem was my previous glue gun broke but that was due my own fault combined with a bit of week material. You need to let the glue heat up before trying to squeeze it. Other than that, I’m happy. I’ve had the angle grinder for 3 years or so and it’s been om for hours at a time. It’s great. For heavy grinding I do have a 125 and a 230 metabo.
Personally I like the Parkside stuff, aswell as the Aldi stuff, and can vouch that the batteries are good, using good quality cells (last time I stripped down an Aldi battery the cells inside were Samsung, so very good value for the price.
So he’s hacking the mower to answer on Wifi. Now, it needs to hack the electromagnetic spectrum around his garden to have Wifi where the mower goes.
Wifi coverage is only needed at the mowers dock. I made sure that if Home Assistant or the Wifi goes down, that the robot will finish its task and return autonomically.
I do have Wifi coverage in my entire garden, btw. Which is nice, because I can get live status updates that way.