You know, it feels as though it’s getting more and more difficult to compete for Father of the Year around here. And [Jon Petter Skagmo] just laid down a new gauntlet — the incredibly overly-engineered kids car.
While the original plan was to build the entire car from scratch, [Jon] eventually opted to use an off-the-shelf car that had a dead battery.
While the original architecture was quite simple, the new hardware has just about everything a kid could want in a tricked-out ride, most of which is accessible through the really cool dashboard.
We’re talking headlights, a music player, a siren, a selfie video cam that doubles as two-way communication with the driver, and even a garage door opener that uses an MQTT connection.
Under the cute little hood is where you’ll find most of the electronics. The car’s brain is a Raspberry Pi 3B, and there’s a custom daughter board that includes GPS/GNSS. This was originally meant to geofence [Baby Girl Skagmo] in, but Dad quickly realized that kids are gonna kid and disabled it pretty soon after.
This isn’t the first high-tech rebuild of a kiddie car that we’ve seen here at Hackaday. Makes us wish we were quite a bit smaller…
Yeah! Shame me and my feeble attempts at being a father!
B^)
Great Build! And he finished it before she physically outgrew it!
One question, are the tires the slippery plastic type, or have a rubbery grip?
Hmm time spent designing it is time not spent with the kid.
While you’re not entirely wrong about that possibility, there are kids who’d enjoy working with their parents on a project like this. You don’t know if he worked on it solo or with the kids. Maybe put a little thought onto things before commenting.
Kids are great and spending time with them is important, but beyond a certain age, they sleep through the night. This is when parents get a chance to unwind from both work and parenting and recover some sanity. For [Jon Petter Skagmo], perhaps unwinding is doing something nice for his kid(s) and enjoying a hobby at the same time – win win!