Surveillance/Audio and Video RC Car

First off, welcome to the tutorial on how to build your very own surveillance/audio and video car. By following these simple steps, you will be able to construct a remote control car that sends a live video and audio feed right to your phone. It can even project your voice from the monitor attached to the car! Essentially, what you will have at the end is like a drone from spy movies, except we do not exactly believe you should be stalking people with this. Anyway, if done correctly, you will have a sturdy vehicle that you can steer as if you were the driver in that actual car. All you need are the following materials:

1. Chevy Silverado 1/35 RC Car. Basic, but it fits the requirements.

2. You'll need eight 3/4 inch screws and three 1 inch screws.

3. Get a Lorex Little Link Baby Monitor.

4. Get a 6x2x1/4 inch piece of wood and two 2x2x1/3 inch piece of wood.

5. You should have a power drill if you're on a DIY website, but if you don't... get one.

6. If you have any of the recent Apple portable devices, say, an iPod touch, iPhone, iPad or iPad Mini, you're good to go. If you don't have one, I'm terribly sorry. Report immediately to your nearest electronic store and buy one.

7. Get the app on the aforementioned Apple device. Lorex Baby Link is an iPhone/iPod program, but it will still download and work on an iPad. Make sure you have the search options set to "iPhone only," though, or you will never be able to find it.

*Note that the app is optimized for iPhone 5, but if it will work on your device then go for it.

**This set is the basics. If you want to upgrade any part of it, feel free. I know that the monitor might not provide the desired continuos stream, and that the car does not have an exceedingly long range. Based on these instructions, you should be able to build about the same thing with different components.

#1 In this step, you will want to remove the casing, or shell, of the car. You can pretty much do this any way you want, although unscrewing it would be best. In our example, however, we actually ripped it off. The casing is the blue piece of the car shown in the attached image.

#2 Screw in the pieces of wood. The two wood pieces should fit within the dimensions of the car almost perfectly, being on one side of the power casing and the other on the opposite side. Then you just want to place the larger piece above them, again being parallel to the sides of the car and inside it's dimensions as much as possible. When you screw the pieces in, you will want to start at the top and have the 3/4 inch screws arranged in a 1/2x1/2 inch square that will attach the car frame, the large wood piece and the two small would pieces together. The square should be as close as possible to the power casing withou damaging it, but if you feel like it'd be more stable if it was near the ends of the pieces go ahead and put them there. Both options work just fine.

#3 Now you want to screw in the camera. Place the camera directly above the power housing in the middle. Next you need to hold the camera still while drilling the three screws from underneath the car into the base of the camera in a triangle formation. Two screws should be touching each end of the back side of the base, while the other screw should be in the center of the front side. This is, however, somewhat risky, and although it worked for me, I'm not guaranteeing anything. Because of this, you could pretty much just choose your own style with this step. All you really want to do is make sure the camera is secure and not going to fall of while you're in the middle of driving. If you do opt not to use this method, the simplest solution would either be glueing or duct taping the camera to the wood.

Like I said before, feel free to make any modifications you want. This is just the beginning, and I'm sure many clever minds out there will find ways to improve this. Remember: enjoy, be responsible, and try not to harass people too much. Thanks again, and have fun with your new toy!