Wiimote + RC car = … fun!
5 February 2008 – 17:34
Today I finally got around playing with the RC car I bought some weeks ago. As a part of the Acrobatic Car project, the goal for now was to create a car which is able to balance itself on top of something moving, like a large ball or cylinder.
Having already established a mechanism to control an electronical circuit using the Wiimote, my goal now was to bridge the gap between the circuit of the car and the wii.
After looking at the car’s circuitry, consisting of a large number of transistors, which I suspected formed a H-bridge, some receiving electronics like a wire coil and a large IC which I suspected contained the logic for converting the RC signal into voltages which were fed into the H-bridge.
My suspicion were true because I found out that wiring +3V directly onto the circuit right after the IC at different pins, gave me control over the forward, backward and steering motions of the vehicle.
Using two opto-couplers which I had lying aroudn from a previous project, I managed to let the wiimote control the car’s circuitry. Hurray!