Failed Kickstarter Project Becomes Open Source Power-Uppable RC Car

Most Kickstarter campaigns these days have nothing to do with raising funds. Instead, they’re used as marketing by corporations that already have the budget to bring the product to market. But there are still some startups launching Kickstarter campaigns that do genuinely need the funding. If the campaign fails, then so does the entire project. That was, unfortunately, the case with StuckAtPrototype’s Kickstarter campaign. It failed to reach its funding goal and StuckAtPrototype had to throw in the towel. But instead of giving up entirely, he decided to reengineer the product and make it open source.

The product in question is a kind of miniature RC car controllable through Bluetooth. But the twist is really cool: sensors on the vehicle let it react to things in the real-world, like magnets and colored surfaces. Users can make their own little race tracks with those elements, which will affect the car. Imagine accidentally driving over a green patch and it makes you car spin out. Or driving over a white patch to get a speed boost. It is almost like Mario Kart in real life!

That idea was too neat to throw away just because the Kickstarter campaign failed, so StuckAtPrototype made the choice to release it as an open source project. We are, of course, big fans of the open source philosophy here at Hackster, so we’re happy to see StuckAtPrototype embrace that.

But to release the project to the public, StuckAtPrototype had to get the design to a respectable stage. He also had to change quite a bit of the original concept to make it more suitable for makers. The new car design is mostly a PCB with DC motors at the corners, which turn the resin 3D-printed wheels. That PCB hosts an ESP32, which makes the car easy to control via a custom-made remote.

The big highlight of this concept is, obviously, the reaction to real-world obstacles. To enable that feature, StuckAtPrototype put a color sensor on the bottom of the PCB. It will, therefore, know if it drives over a green patch or a white patch. To avoid false positives, he also added a magnetic switch. With that, the car will only react to colored patches made of material with magnetic backing.

At this time, the car can respond to green, white, and black patches. The white patch gives the car a temporary speed boost. The black patch gives the car a temporary speed reduction. The green patch causes the car to spin out entirely, like a banana in Mario Kart.

If you want to take advantage of the open source release, you can build you own cars using the files on GitHub.