So I found this old rc car and decided to make it into a robot. I took it apart and with a 9 volt battery, I found where the connections that made the motors go forward and reverse for both the steering and the back wheels. I did this by putting the black wire on ground and the red wire, 9v, on different solder points on the board, until I found what I was looking for. Next I soldered the wires and attached them to digital pins 1,2,3, and 4. Then I attached an arduino uno to the car with two rubber bands. I wrote a simple program that just runs the back motors to drive forward for 5 seconds and then reverse for 5 seconds. To power the arduino independently, I soldered two wire from the negative and positive terminals of the battery connected to the rc car and attached the red wire to vin and the black wire to ground.
Plans
- Switch out the motor for sterring with a mini servo
- Add a servo with a Ping))) ultrasound for object ovidence
- Add two leds, red for when the ping is scanning and green for a clear path
Photos:
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://community.robotshop.com/robots/show/hacked-rc-car