rc

240 Articles

Land ROV Is Internet Connected And Packed Full Of Stuff

April 29, 2012 by 9 Comments

[Blair Kelly] has always been interesting in the concept of Remote Operated Vehicles. As soon as he got his hands on an Arduino he began his endeavor to turn an RC vehicle into a land-based ROV. What he’s done so far is incredible.

Here he’s showing off features of the build using a PS3 controller. But it can also take commands from an Xbox 360 controller or an arcade-style steering wheel. We like the latter the best, which is shown off at about six and a half minutes into the video (embedded after the break). Since there’s a webcam on board, this ends up being a virtual cockpit for the pint-sized car. But it gets better. That webcam is mounted on a servo motor, and [Blair] included controls that pan the camera. This lets the driver ‘look’ left and right. On the front of the vehicle there’s an accelerometer. Data is collected by the Arduino and sent via the WiFly module. This adds rumble to the controller if you’re using one that has that ability.

It’s a big project already, but it sounds like [Blair] has not end of ideas for future versions. Right now he’s planning to increase the overall size which will let him explore places that aren’t as flat as his livingroom.

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Cardboard Hexapod Gets Around With Three Motors

April 23, 2012 by 4 Comments

Here’s a lesson in doing a lot with very little. [Oldrobot] built this hexapod using cardboard for most of the pieces. He still had the box from his vacuum clear and it just happened to have a large black area the makes the top of the beetle look like it’s been painted.

The control board is from an old radio controlled airplane. Since RC airplanes used servos for flight control, it was a snap to hook up the three that make the bug go. One controls the set of middle legs which lift the body and change which of the propulsion legs are in contact with the ground. The other two servers move pairs of the front or back legs. It uses the same concept as this other RC controller hexapod, but much less time went into crafting the chassis and legs.

As you can see in the video after the break, the control scheme isn’t the most intuitive. But once you get a hang of which stick orientation affects each leg movement the bot ends up having fairly precise steering.

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Reverse Engineering A Futaba SBUS Remote Control

April 5, 2012 by 18 Comments

In the world of model aircraft, Futaba’s SBUS system is a big deal. Instead of having one servo per channel, the SBUS system allows for 16 proportional controls and two digital channels for each receiver. Basically, if you’re building an awesome plane with retracts on the landing gear and bomb bay doors, this is what you want to use. [Michael] wanted to use a few SBUS servos for a project he’s working on, so of course he had to reverse engineer this proprietary protocol.

Each SBUS servo operates over a single 100kbps serial connection with a few interesting twists: the signal is transmitted as big endian, but the individual bytes are little endian, something [Michael] figured out after stumbling across this month old mbed post. [Michael] used a serial library written by [fat16lib] and was able to change the parity and stop bits along with a simple hex inverter. Everything worked perfectly when the servo was connected to a an Arduino Mini.

Even though the SBUS system requires special Futaba servos, we can easily see how useful [Michael]’s work would be to outrageously complex robots or cnc machines. Check out the video after the break for a quick demo of [Michael]’s breadboard controlling one of these SBUS servos.

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Make Your RC Car Drive Itself With This Simple Brain Swap

April 4, 2012 by 13 Comments

arduino-rc-conversion

If the kids have lost interest in that RC car or truck you bought them over the holidays, [Randy Sarafan] from Instructables has a few ideas that might help make the toys fun again, while teaching your kids a bit about electronics in the process. In his writeup, he shows how to swap out the brains of your run of the mill RC truck, enabling it to do far more than was originally intended. The procedure is pretty simple, and something that you can easily involve your kids in, if you’d like.

He uses an Arduino and a motor shield to keep the conversion simple, but this can be done with just about any capable microcontroller you might have on hand. [Randy] added a Parallax Ping sensor to the front of the truck enabling it to avoid objects as it drives itself, but since he cut out the truck’s original control board we’re assuming that there’s no way to override the truck’s actions at present.

[Randy] calls the conversion a “robot” though it seems like more of a semi-autonomous rover if you ask us. Regardless, revamping an old RC car is certainly far better than letting it collect dust on a shelf, or worse, tossing it out during spring cleaning.

Continue reading to see a short video of [Randy’s] RC truck in action.

[via HackedGadgets]

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The RC Transmitter That Does Everything

March 30, 2012 by 24 Comments

[Demetris] sent in a project he’s been working on over the last year. It’s called the Open Source Radio Control, and promises to be a modular platform for every imaginable remote control transmitter need. If you’d like to control a bipedal android or a 3D aerobatic model plane, the OSRC can do it while transmitting video from the cockpit down to your hands.

Last summer, we caught wind of the OSRC project to build an extensible and open source remote control radio that would do anything; from displaying video from the cockpit to serving as the brain of a UAV rig, the OSRC promised to do everything.

A fully decked out OSRC can be had for about $1400, putting it in the upper echelon of remote control radios. For that price, though, you get a fully customizable radio with your choice of shoulder buttons and a 4.8 inch LCD that receives a video feed from the cockpit of your favorite model. The base unit starts out around $700; still very expensive for a remote control radio, but reasonable when you consider all the possible upgrades.

[Demetris] and the rest of the team put together an outrageously long yet surprisingly beautiful video showing off a few features of the OSRC. You can check that out after the break.

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Human-shaped Planes Troll NYC

February 28, 2012 by 30 Comments

 

It looks like a genetic leap has unleashed the age of mutants, but this is really just a few guys trolling New York City with some custom RC aircrafts. The video after the break shows the fliers up close. They’re pretty much full size, we’d guess 5’10” from head to heel. The outstretched arms and body act as wings, while the legs act as ailerons and rudders. But from afar (or even a medium distance) it’s quite difficult to make out the flat surfaces… they look like office workers loosed from their cubicles. Unfortunately we don’t have more than a flight demo to share with you. If you know where to find build info (or any extra details at all actually) don’t forget to send in a tip.  We wonder if these are the same guy who made the flying hero we posted back in July?

There’s another nugget of delight right at the beginning of the video. A sweet octocopter which looks much like this one was used to capture the aerial footage.

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OK, You Might Not Be Paranoid – Perhaps That Priority Mail Box IS Spying On You

January 6, 2012 by 15 Comments

rc-box-bot

[Thomas Renck] recently picked up a 1000mW wireless video transmitter that he ultimately planned to mount in an RC plane. Before he strapped it on a plane to potentially kiss it goodbye for good, he wanted to play with it a while to see what it was capable of.

After a friend helped him determine the camera’s maximum range (about 1900 feet on open ground), he thought it would be fun to strap it on his nitro R/C truck. That didn’t work out so well due to some vibration issues, so he constructed a makeshift R/C car from the shipping box the camera arrived in, along with some other odds and ends.

As you can see in the video below, the propeller-driven “Boxmobile” zips along quite nicely. The video feed from the camera is pretty impressive too, allowing him to easily guide the car while it’s well out of sight.

At nearly $350, the self-proclaimed “ghetto-bot” is certainly not cheap, though we hear body repairs are a piece of cake!

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