Arduino Controlled Rc Car

This is the RC car that we created using an Arduino uno. It took us about two months to complete it. Below, you can see all the steps you need for building this RC car.

Here is the list of what you will need:

1. Arduino Uno Board
2. Arduino Bluetooth
3. 1 Servo motor
4. 12 volt motor
5. Flex filament 2.85 mm (Black)
6. PLA filament 2.85 mm (Green, Silver)
7. Batteries
8. Battery holders
9. Box for Arduino
10. Power bank (optional)
11. Drill
12. Relays
13. Cables
14. Epoxy Adhesive
15. Rubber Mallet
16. 4 Rims

The program that we used was online, but we edited it based on our needs, because we used relays instead of motor controller. The code is this:

The car moves with a 12 volt motor and we used spur gears, so they will enable the rod to be spined. The motor is connected to the relay, which is four channel relay that enables us to go forward and backward. For the controller we used an arduino uno; for the joystick we wanted to use our phones so we installed a bluetooth module. For the energy of the arduino we used a power bank: the reason is that our batteries weren't capable of giving enough energy for both (arduino board and moving part). For the treading we used a servo motor.

First of all you will need to make the chassis of the car. When we first started building the RC we made the chassis using wood but it did not look appealing, so we decided to 3D print it. We used Sketch Up Program to design it, and then we printed it with PLA material. Since our 3D printer in 20 x 20 cm, we had to split our design into two pieces and connect them after they were printed.

We designed the box using Adobe Illustrator, but for easier way you can make it using the online site - click here. When we were thinking how to make it to stay fixed, the best way was to cut all the sides by using indention (just like in the picture - the transparent box). After the design is finished, you have to go to File/Export/save as type: (choose) AutoCAD Interchange File (*.DXF). You can name it as you wish and choose the place where you want to save it.

- "Why as .dxf? – Because the file than can be read from the programs such as Corel Draw and LaserCut.

13.5 x 11 cm, height 4.5 cm

In this box, we set the Arduino boards and the relays, and then we did the whole cable management.

Note: You can use wood board for the box, but we decided to use Plexi glass because we wanted to be able to see what's inside it.

We 3D printed the gears as well. We used Autodesk Inventor to design our gears, because it offers a really good and easy way to make what you want. We used the same material as for the chassis: PLA (green).

We used spur gears: one of them bigger and the other smaller (Measurements are given in the attached designs). We connected them to the motor at the back of the chassis.

For the steering we again were based on our 3D printer and PLA. We designed it using ScetchUP. We used a servo motor which we connected to two steering rods, which were attached to two steering blocks on each side and then we connected everything to two steering hubs on each side.

For the batteries we used lithium ion batteries (18650) which we got from some unusable laptops. Battery holders' design we got from the internet: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:137582

We downloaded the file, 3D printed it and then we decided to glue it to the chassis. We then realized it was not a good idea because if we wanted to be able to remove the batteries from the chassis to charge them, we could not do so if we fixed them. So we used Velcro (it became such a good solution).

- Below you can download the .stl file of the battery holder that we used.

For the wheels we wanted to buy them because we had a deadline for our project but we couldn't find the ones that we wanted, so we designed them.

For designing, we used Autodesk Inventor with the help of this tutorial on YouTube:

When we printed them we had a problem, because they did not become strong enough, so we printed the inside part again and used epoxy glue to fix it to the whole rim.

As for the tread, at first we printed them with flex filament but there were not enough friction. We used some sort of thick electrical tape that we glued to the rim (attached below) and that seemed to work just fine.

Since we are converting an actual car to an electric vehicle we thought that maybe our RC should look like the Twingo the we are converting. Designing it did not take a long time, but printing it did.

First we had to split our design into two parts because it wouldn't fit in our 3D printer. It took approximately 20h in total to print it.

Here at BONEVET Makerspace, we have a lot of kids who want to play with the RC so we needed bumpers to protect it. We 3D printed the bumpers with flex filament and it took about 20 minutes to print both of them.

We made 3 designs in total, but only 1 of them worked, because 2 of them were not designed good enough. The problem was that those were not enough protective.