1 reply to this topic

[Randster]

Hi all, First off, I'm a super newbie to all things hardware related, so apologies in advance if some of these questions seem off. I recently got a Netduino board a few months back and after working through some examples of getting the on board LED to blink, then a few LEDs hooked onto a breadboard to blink, I wanted to try a real project. I found this project (google for "Wifi Robot" - its on a site called JBProjects.net) where a guy took apart an RC Car, an old Linksys router (re-flashed with OpenWRT) and an Arduino board and managed to build himself an RC car that could be controlled via computer. I'd like to do the same thing with my Netduino; except that instead of using a Linksys router I want to put my tiny netbook on top of the RC car. So the general idea is this: Netduino -> Motors Netbook on top of RC Car -> Netduino Netbook jumps onto my Wifi Network and has custom WCF software that talks to the Netduino Laptop has WCF software that talks to my Netbook's custom software to drive the RC car around. But the basics I'm still not sure about. I ran the idea by a friend of mine at work who after looking over the RC Car that I got from Wal-Mart suggested that I go buy a couple of ESC's to use to drive the motors on the RC Car. I've purchased one, but I'm a little lost from this point forward what everything else would entail. Any pointers from anyone would be appreciated. Thanks all, -R.

[Chris Seto]

A regular hobby grade RC car ESC is going to kill your toy RC's motor in a heartbeat. What you want is an H-Bridge to control the motors. You'll use serial to talk to the Netduino (3.3V TTL to USB cable) and you'll need the Netduino to parse the incoming data and turn that into PWM signals to drive the motor. What kind of RC car is this? If it's a regular one, you will also need to figure out how to make it steer. I did a similar project, but I used all hobby grade components. See: http://chrisseto.com