This article accompanies the video “Rehacking an R/C car” part one. The link to the video can be found at the end of the article.

Shopping list:

1. Chibot controller (Hey Eddy, I need my own pro model!)
2. Battery pack (the one on the R/C car [should] be to powerful for the board)
3. A R/C car with a R/C servo (a cheap R/C car in other words, check $1 clearance)
4. Screws and those hex pieces are (this is when watching the video would help)
5. You will need to build the programmer
(http://www.wrighthobbies.net/guides/bascomsample.htm )

Let us start by taking of the cover of the R/C car. There should be a bunch of screws at the bottom, take them all out. Soon you will be able to just lift it off. Now there will be a board in the middle of the car, usually trash. Congratulations, you just made it naked, now we got to put some clothes back on it. But before I explain how to put the clothes on, I want to show you how they work.

First a business orders cotton… Wait… I was supposed to be explaining how the electronics work. Okay so first I’m going to teach you what a NPN and what a PNP does. So there are three pins on NPNs and PNPs: Collector, Base, and Emitter. The Collector will collect the energy, and then when power is sent into the base of the NPN or PNP it opens the Emitter and then guess what? The emitter will emit energy!

So the H-Bridge has two NPNs and PNPs, if they were all PNPs or NPNs not all of the energy will flow through. Check out the pictures here. Those little switches are the NPNs and PNPs, and the red parts are where the energy is flowing through. Well now we get our hands dirty!

Okay, let’s put the clothes on! So let’s take the chibot board and put it where the old board was, now take a drill and drill the four corners through the board. Yippie we’re almost there! So now take your screws and put it through the holes that you drilled. Now take the hexagon pieces, and screw them on tight. Now take another hexagon piece and put it about half-way through the screw. Then put the board on and put the hexagons on top of the board but don’t squeeze the board.

Now see if you can either tape or put the battery on the car somewhere. Make sure that it isn’t going to fall off and tear its self apart.

The main clothing

Now see the green little pieces in the photo to the right? There should be some markings under each of the ports. The “+ -“ ports are the positive and negative power, “M1” and “M2” are short for motor one, and motor two. So you’ll probably want to use jeweler tools to unscrew these. Now put the red wire from the battery pack, read stands for positive power in electronics, into the “+” port and tighten the screw above that port.

Now do the same for the negative power and the same with the motors, which don’t have a positive or negative side so as long as you don’t put one of the other motor’s wires into a slot that has the other motors. Now the robot is ready to go! That’s all for this month, until then keep those clothes on!

Helpful Links

• The Chibot controller is only available at Wright Hobbies
• Link for battery pack
• Link for programmer (unless custom making)