Arduino rc car from Bajdi on Vimeo.
I finally made my old Nikko RC car work again 🙂 It wasn’t easy to be honest, there were several obstacles along the way. Since my last post I had found out that the L298 H-bridge was not powerful enough to drive the motor. It would quickly heat up and then turn it’s self of. The L298 has 2 channels and it’s possible to pair them, this should be good for 4A. How to connect the pins from the 2 channels is explained in the L298 datasheet. I soldered some wires to the bottom of my L298 board to pair the 2 channels.
To power the L298, Arduino and servo I first used a 2 cell Lipo battery. The voltage of the Lipo is to high for the little SG90 servo so I used a 3A UBEC to drop the voltage to 5V. I hooked up a small nRF24L01 module to the Arduino sensor shield for the wireless control. I quickly came to the conclusion that this wasn’t going to work. Every time I tried to move the rc car forward or backward the Arduino would reset. The Lipo battery is certainly powerful enough so it must be “electrical noise” from the motor that caused the Arduino to reset. I then soldered the biggest non polarized cap I found in my parts box to the motor terminals but to no avail. The simplest solution was to add another battery, so I powered the Arduino from a 9V battery.
Then my nRF24L01 modules started dropping packets when I turned the front wheels. Caused by noise from the UBEC. So I taped the nRF24L01 module to the old antenna on the rc car so there was some room between the UBEC and the wireless module. And then I was able to play with my old rc car again 🙂 I used my self made remote control with the same sketch I use for my Rover 5. This sketch just sends the analog readings of the joystick to the RC car. I just put all the parts on the chassis and put some tape around it. It’s far from an elegant solution but it works…
Arduino rc car
can you post all the instructions. i have a spektrum dx7 and ar6100 receiver. i have a monster truck, arduino mega 2560 and arduino uno. thanks so much in advance.
I don’t use a rc remote control but a self made remote control based on an Arduino and nRF24L01 module. It’s completely different then a spektrum dx7 and ar6100 receiver. Have a look at this website http://rcarduino.blogspot.com There you will find info on how to use rc equipment with Arduino.
What I discovered with my L298 Bridge was that the so called “15 Watt” heat-sink they come with is pretty much worthless, its more like a 5 watt, I added an old pc heat-sink and fan to one of my units and it can now run a large rc motor at 12V and 2amps all day long without getting to hot to touch the sink. Before that it would run 20 seconds and go into temp protection mode throttling the motor, and you would loose skin if you touched the little heat-sink.
The L298 if bridged will run 1 motor at 4A peak and 3A continuous.
Great work! just want to ask, how do you control it wirelessly? do use an xbee? any chance i could see the code that u use for this project?
Thanks!
No I use nRF24L01 modules, much cheaper then Xbee but uses the SPI bus.
Ä° cant found transciever sketch(car and controller)
I have not shared it… but why don’t you write your own? You will learn a lot more by writing your own code.
Thank you so much for the answer.. I’ve build a car and controller like your car and old remote controller, and after I tried to write some codes but it did not work :/
So maybe you can help me. I wrote a mail to info [at] bajdi d0t com if you want to help me, please contact me 🙂
My best compliments.
Which kind of remote control are you using? I built my own using nRF24L01 wireless modules. If you want help the best place is the Arduino forums.
i used same parts like your controller and car.
controller;
nRF24L01, Joystick, arduino uno, sensor shield.
Car;
Arduino mega, nRF24L01,L298, servo, and dc motor.
i tryed that codes.
http://www.bajdi.com/arduino-rc-car-part-2-controlling-the-servo/
thats working (dc motor and servo.)
but i cant use that with nRF24L01 code.
Have you tried out one of my nRF24L01 example sketches to check if the nRF24L01 modules work?
yah, nRF24L01 modules are working with 3.3v (with an example sketch)
Would you share with me exactly your car codes? (if you want 🙂 )
Post your sketch on the Arduino forums. Lots more people that can help you there.
Give the sketch for the transmitter and receiver please.
Take a look at this blog post: http://www.bajdi.com/rover-5-with-gripper-remote-control/