Warning
This activity involves opening an electronic toy, cutting its wires and reconnecting them. Your toy could end up becoming totally useless. Hacking has its risks and rewards!
RC Car
Materials
- toy RC car with 4 or 6 AA batteries
- 1 micro:bit (optionally, another micro:bit too if you want radio control)
- wire trimmer
- small Philips screw driver
- 1 Kitronik motor driver
What’s our hack plan?
Most toy RC cars use 3 small DC motors to operate:
- 1 DC motor to spin (torque) the back wheels
- 1 DC motor to spin (torque) the front wheels
- 1 DC motor to steer the front wheels
What we’re going to do is open up the RC car, remove the existing electronic controller, and replace it with the Kitronik motor driver that controls 2 DC motors. We will connect the two torque motors to one controller and the steering motor to the other controller.
After the motor driver is connected, we will use a micro:bit to control it. Also, we can use another micro:bit as a radio controller for the micro:bit that’s in the car.
Activities
Let’s make it!