It's a Remote Possibility

If you are looking for a new hobby, getting into RC cars is a fantastic choice that combines fun and creativity with technical skills. Whether you are racing high-speed models on a track or tackling off-road terrain with rugged rock crawlers, these RC vehicles offer endless fun for enthusiasts of all ages. And if you want more than just entertainment, they also sneak in plenty of opportunities to learn about mechanics, electronics, and engineering, as many models can be customized and upgraded for better performance.

Low-end cars — the sort that you might find on the shelf at a big-box store — are not especially fun though if you are over the age of 10 or 12. High-end cars, on the other hand, are often very expensive, and require some know-how to properly operate and maintain. As such, neither option is especially well-suited to the needs of the average person that wants to dip their toes into the world of RC vehicles. A software engineer named Matt Sroufe has shown that there is another option — build your own RC car that you can customize with some cool features. This will not only give you a fun vehicle to play with, but also an education that will aid you in upping your RC skills.

The key to Sroufe’s build that makes it ideal for beginners is that it is simple and inexpensive. Perhaps the most difficult part of the build is simplified by purchasing an off-the-shelf chassis that already comes equipped with an electric motor to drive it, and a servo to handle steering. By adding an AI Thinker ESP32-CAM (or a compatible board) and some batteries, one has about all they need to build a wireless, first-person view car that can tear around the neighborhood.

The ESP32-CAM was positioned facing forward on the chassis so that its camera would have a view of everything in front of the car. Wi-Fi connectivity built into the ESP32 microcontroller was leveraged to both send control signals to the car, and to stream video back to a computer running a server application that was developed in Python. GPIO pins on the ESP32-CAM were wired to both the servo and an electric speed controller that drove the motor; this allowed signals from the server app to be sent to the ESP32, which then controlled the vehicle.

After flashing the ESP32-CAM with custom firmware to support its new role, and developing the Python server app, Sroufe was able to remotely control the car with a Bluetooth gamepad while watching the video stream on a computer. Of course it would also be possible to control the vehicle the old fashioned way, by staying nearby and keeping one’s eyes on it, if preferred.

If you are looking for a cheap and easy way to get into RC vehicles, or if you just want to learn more about electronics and mechanics in your next project, Sroufe’s ESP32 RC car is a great build to copy. Check out the GitHub repository for more details and source code. It has been released under a permissive MIT license, so feel free to borrow.

Want to see some more interesting FPV vehicle builds? You might be interested in this unusual one.