Parkside

2 Articles

Find My Power Tool Battery

September 23, 2024 by 7 Comments

Apple’s Find My network has seen its fair of hacks to devices, but perhaps the most unusual we’ve seen is before us today. [biemster] has added a Lidl Parkside smart connected power tool battery to the network, not by concealing an AirTag within it, but by hacking its on-board firmware.

Opening up the device reveals a Tuya BT17L Bluetooth module, the hackable nature of which due to other projects prompted a port of a previous Find My project which provided open source access to the network. The result is as he describes, the world’s chunkiest key finder, and also we’re guessing the one with one of the longest battery lives too.

The European budget supermarkets are well known for their budget bargain aisles, and Lidl’s Parkside range has some surprisingly robust tools among it. They might not quite be up to replacing IKEA in the hacker source stakes, but those of us who live in countries served by them know to keep an eye out in the hope of fresh gems alongside those awesome AlpenFest apple crumble cakes. This one certainly isn’t the first Parkside hack we’ve seen.

Make A Cheap Robot Mower Much Smarter

July 2, 2024 by 15 Comments

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.