This Low-Cost RC Tank Features FPV Control
Thanks to affordable and plentiful modern components, you can build Tobias’ Mini FPV Speed Tank on a budget.
If you grew up with the RC toys of the ‘80s and ‘90s, then you’re missing out on the cool stuff that is available today. If you were lucky 30 years ago, you might have received a crappy plastic RC truck that could barely turn and with NiCad batteries that ran flat after eight minutes of use. There is nothing to be ashamed of, because there wasn’t much better than that available at the time. But high-quality electronic components are now affordable and plentiful, which is why you can build Tobias’ Mini FPV Speed Tank on a budget.
As the name suggests, this little remote-controlled tanks a features FPV (first-person view) camera. That means that you can see from the tank’s perspective as you pilot it around. Tobias also designed this tank to be speedy. Instead of slow little servos or slow little N20 motors, he equipped the tank with 24mm brushed gear motors. Almost the entire body of the tank is taken up by those two motors; one motor drives the left tank tread and the other motor drives the right tank tread. Both the body and the treads were designed in Autodesk Fusion 360 and are 3D-printable.
The rest of the tank consists of a LiPo battery and the control electronics. Tobias used a Pimoroni Tiny 2040 development board, but you should be able to use any Raspberry Pi RP2040-based board with the same code. It receives radio control signals through an ELRS Nano receiver. It captures video with a Foxeer Pico Razer mini FPV camera and transmits that video through a miniature FPV VTX board (any model small enough to fit should work). It also requires a 5V voltage regulator and a voltage shifter to get the proper voltages to each component.
Aside from the aforementioned parts, the only others that you’ll need are some fasteners (screws for the motors and treads). Assembly is fast and easy. The microcontroller code is straightforward and simply translates the RC signals (received via Crossfire serial) into motor commands. You can flash the code to the RP2040 using the Arduino IDE.
As you can see in the video, this tiny tank is quick and provides a pretty clear video feed as long as it isn’t too far away. It’s great for roaming around the house or even exploring relatively mild outdoors terrain.
