Nitro RC Car!

Nitro RC Car

Hey there!

So, I figured I should write a blog post for one of parts of my genius project : my RC car. Well, here it goes!

The Nitro RC car was the most fun project. During the construction process, I spent literally months researching the necessary parts. A little background, I was very into cars as a kid. And I loved learning how they work. I read tons of car and computer books during my childhood, and some of it stayed with me. I did however need to relearn a lot of new concepts, and adjust my mindset for the smaller scale. I spent much more time researching parts, concepts, records and mechanics to fully understand how Nitro RC cars work that spent on actually building and modifying the car.

The construction process was relatively short and painless. I didn't completely fabricate more of my parts. Instead, I used amazon and other hobbyist websites to order my individual parts. The majority of the parts were compatible, and the parts that weren't were by design, as I did fabricate some of my own solutions to keep the project as 'cheap' as possible. Total cost of the project is around 350$, which might seem like much. But most RC nitro cars range from 300$-1000s$. Some examples of objects I fabricated myself is I 3D printed body panels around the car to project it from bumps. I used roller skating bearings for my front and rear wheels to decrease friction, increasing the amount of power put on the wheels. I painted most of the parts black to keep a consistent color scheme. I bought roughly 20 different springs and 10 different types of shocks trying to find the perfect balance between off-reading capability and steering performance. I tuned the Nitro, trying to find the perfect mixture of air-fuel, to produce the best performance and reliability for the motor. I modified the servos and steering.

The entire system uses an Arduino, with a receiver and transmitter on both the RC cars and the ground to control the nitro RC car. The reason I replaced the entire system is because I mounted RGB LEDs all over the Nitro car to enrich the viewing experience, and I noticed that the throttle response on the (unmodifiable) remote and receiver combo I bought didn't align with the throttle management. The Remote gave me direct control over the vehicle, meaning I would have to accommodate how the car puts power down, and steers in real time. So if I put my finger on the trigger too quickly, the rush of air into the vehicle sometimes cause the motor to stall, or put down so much power that I would lose control over the vehicle. I realized that I wanted control that would be smoother than my hand could deliver, and would make decisions over how to put the power down. So using an 2 nanos and 2 wifi modules, I built a system where one nano with a wifi chip would replace the electronics in the transmitter, send the steering and throttle information over to my computer, which would use processing(which I know is slow, but I have a slow reaction time so I didn't notice it) to take that signal, process it so that the vehicle would be easier to control, and send it to the nano chip on board the RC car.

Here's a clip of the vehicle, sorry I didn't show how the receiver and transmitter worked. The code wasn't entirely done by me so I don't have a complete understanding of it, but it made a world of a difference. Before, I had a tendency to constantly adjust my steering, and I would put my finger on the throttle too quickly, causing spinouts, unwanted burnouts and engine stalls. Now the vehicle is controllable enough for me to use(even though I crashed it @ the end of the video)