This Two-Wheeled RC Car Is Spin-credible!
A broken toy car was brought back to life as a fun, ESP32-controlled project.
Around two years ago, tuenhidiy made a self-balancing robot from a broken toy vehicle. After upgrading this robot to a new version, the car was left unused, but not forgotten. With this project, tuenhidiy has now repurposed the chassis to create a simple two-wheeled RC car that doesn’t balance, but instead spins the wheels — and thus the inside control components — without regard to vertical orientation. The new device can go forwards or backwards, and can turn the wheels deferentially to spin very quickly.
The build is based on a Beetle ESP32 dev board, along with an L298N motor driver module to rotate the two motor/gearboxes and thus the wheels. Power is provided by a pair of AA batteries linked directly into the Beetle board, as well as the motor driver.
User interface consists of a custom Blynk app running on a smartphone. This includes buttons to go forward, backward, left, and right, plus sliders that vary both motor speeds for potentially very crazy movements.
Code is available in tuenhidiy's post. It could be a great way to bring that old RC car that’s been in the closet for a while back to life, or put motors to use that have just been sitting in your parts bin for way too long!
