Hot Wheels FPV RC Car

Max Imagination's Hot Wheels FPV conversion is an epic feat of miniaturization.

Jeremy Cook
2 years ago

Hot Wheels cars are typically a few inches long by around an inch high and wide. This is a great size for pretending to race one against another on the floor, but what about actually converting a Matchbox into an RC car, complete with an FPV camera? It’s a feat that would seem possible in theory, but extremely difficult in practice.

Max Imagination decided to take this challenge on and built his own 1/64 scale FPV RC car, using a red Porsche 993 GT2 chassis as the base. The build is outlined in the video below.

Max first drilled out the rivets on the bottom, allowing access to the vehicle’s internals. Inside this limited volume he was able to stuff Seeed Studio's XIAO ESP32S3 Sense, which includes not just GPIO and Wi-Fi/BLE connections, but an OV2640 camera module for FPV feedback as well. He also embedded a motor taken from a 9g servo to drive the car forward, and a tiny 1.5g servo and linkage mechanism for steering.

To add to this challenge, running a web server for FPV streaming plus controls would have been tricky. As a solution, he used an ESP32C3 device to take signals from a second web interface. Max also installed a pair of LEDs that can be turned high, low, and off as needed.

Wiring, along with getting the mechanicals correct, was a difficult task, but Max was eventually able to get this little device racing around a homemade obstacle course. More info is available in the video description if you’re contemplating taking on a similar feat of miniaturization!

Jeremy Cook
Engineer, maker of random contraptions, love learning about tech. Write for various publications, including Hackster!
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