RC Car Racing Over the Internet
Qllie Q’s FPV setup enables strangers to race RC cars around his home.
According to Ollie Q’s recent video, you need 28 million dollars to join F1. You also need to be abnormally short. For those of us that only meet one or none of the requirements, you can always race remote control cars around your home. The only problem here is that you need at least one other person to perform an actual race, so Ollie decided to make a driving setup that can be used with strangers/new friends(?) over the Internet.
The track is constructed throughout his house, using strips of wood that are attached together with screws and rubber bands. It’s a rather clever setup, as it holds everything together securely enough, but allows the track to be configured as needed. It can then be folded up for storage when not racing.
Ollie shows people driving around on his track, starting at around the 1:40 mark in the video. This is set up like a sort of presentation/gameshow that’s a lot of fun to watch. For better or worse, there is no shortage of random people on the Internet if you poke around enough.
In time trials, it seems that physical distance from the track (and thus lag) appears to be a huge factor in how well racers perform. Ollie’s original configuration also added on about a ½ second delay on top of that, making things even more challenging.
When he actually races head-to-head with someone, that person was 27km away, and the configuration was revised to make things more responsive. While details of the build are fairly slim, each car appears to have a Raspberry Pi (or similar) onboard, plus a camera for FPV video. For a different take on remote racing, you might also check out the Internet-playable RC Mario Kart setup by Surrogate.tv, featured here in late 2020.