Projects

Arduino Wifi Remote Controlled Car

I wanted a remote control car that I could control via WiFI, in case I wanted to program it to do stuff over the network. I couldn’t find a commercial product I liked that did this in August 2022, so I made this.

Link to open-source code

This car was built to be controlled via this controller. However, the control architecture was built to be generic, so it could support different types of controllers. I wanted the ability to record commands sent to it via Joystick, and then replay them so I could program routes or patterns of movement for the vehicle in an intuitive way. The ability to program another Arduino to act as a controller to send a series of commands for fixed routes by the press of a button or on a timer was also desired.

Lessons Learned the Hard Way:

  1. The plastic cover of the car had a surprisingly powerful effect on connection reliability. The maximum reliable range appeared to be only 5 meters/16 feet, even with a direct line of sight to the router.
  2. Arduino Uno WiFi Rev 2 does not offer good support for external antennas.
  3. To get a better reliable range it was necessary to completely refactor the design to something that offered good support for external antennas.
  4. It would have been wise to read the specs for my motor controller more carefully, which also offered encoder support. This was unfortunately not realized until after I wrote code to use the encoder shield.
  5. It would have been smarter to use a differential steering library instead of writing this functionality myself. I didn’t do it because it was easy, I did it because I thought it would be easy when I started.

Components:

  1. Arduino Wifi Rev 2
  2. Roboclaw Motor Controller
  3. Robogia 3 Axis Encoder
  4. 12V, 6000mah Li-ION Power Bank
  5. GoBilda Recon Chassis Kit
  6. 2x SPDT Switch
  7. 2x LEDs