Hey guys, I wanted to share a project with you guys that I am building. The project is a remotely driven r/c car with a twist. Instead looking at the car and driving it around from a distance like you would normally drive an r/c car, you get a view from inside the drivers seat! A PC steering wheel and pedal system have been setup for control of the vehicle. All steering and pedal functions behave just as they would in a real car. To take the project a step further I installed a Lynxmotion pan/tilt camera base on the car and I mounted an inexpensive wireless camera on it. Video currently is sent from the camera back into a video capture card on my PC because that’s where I have my wheel/pedals setup. It could be just as easily viewed on a big screen TV or any input with RCA connections though. The camera pan is also synchronized with the turning of the wheel. When the wheels turn right, the camera moves right also. I have used a 4 channel Futaba 4YF radio to control the steering, throttle, pan, and tilt. I use a PCTx interface to tie the transmitter into my PC. The r/c car that I am using is a Tamiya Hummer. Here is the first version: Here is the latest version: I have also put up a few videos of some of the tests I did. You can see them on my YouTube page: www.youtube.com/endurancerc Stage 3 of the project will begin in a few days. I have ordered a set of video goggles from www.3dvisor.com . They will be used to display the video from the wireless camera and also move the pan/tilt base. Thanks for looking!
Does the servo-controlling signal from the PC-suite go through the transmitter or what? I'd like to get two servos connected straight to the parallel port so I could turn a webcam or coilgun or something via PC
I love the idea...I had the same idea, but with an R/C helicopter, but never got around to doing it. Very sweet
Thanks guys! I know this is more of a PC mod forum but I figured you would enjoy this project anyway. Jipa, I connected the interface to my PC via the PCTx interface. It allows me to send control commands from my PC and into the transmitter's trainer port. I do not think you can control servos directly from the parallel port. You would probably need a microcontroller to sit in between the servos and the PC in order to send the proper signals. If anyone knows how to drive a servo directly from the parallel port I'm interested though.
Well I suppose it's not "impossible" to control a servo directly via parallel port.. AFAIK the servo just needs +vcc, gnd and a signal which should, atleast according to my knowledge, be possibe to emulate with a software. I'm pretty sure there's ready programs to do that...
have a look on http://www.kitsrus.com im sure they do a kit for controling a servo, and the designs for all of their kits are free too
The servo needs a pwm signal with an ON time of IIRC 1-2 ms centered on 1.5ms. getting a proper pwm signal with any kind of granularity is going to be difficult on a standard pport.
I dont see what you are referring to. That link only includes kits that use the parallel port to connect to a microcontroller. I did not see any that ran a servo directly from the port. Anyway back to the real project. Ive got the head tracking video goggles working with the pan/tilt. Its a rough implementation but its just setup to show what it can do. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RfmbwsM7go
woooow a brother r/c dude... hug hug some time ago i was planing a full scale r/c car , a 4 cilinder boxer engine but you my man did a great job and goggles thing..... that is evil
i think it would be great to have the goggles working seperate to the cars main stearing. have the stearing and acceleration pedals as they were before and then the goggles so you can just look around. sorry if ive missed anything but im in a bit of a rush but just had to comment great mod keep it going.
Thanks for the good comments everyone! GT40_GearHead, Full scale would be pretty cool. I dont know if I would run it anywhere other than a deserted area, I dont trust my r/c electronics enough Graffix, Thats how it will be set up eventually. I was just using old code that was setup to steer with the left/right movement. When complete this will have: 1. proportional steering via PC game wheel 2. proportional throttle, break, and reverse when pullng back on the shifter 3. head tracking fed into the pan/tilt 4. video feed from the wireless camera 5. and if the mic doesnt pic up too much of the r/c noise, an audio feed into the headset earphones
Instead of using the shifter for throttle, brake and reverse, what about using a steering wheel set for a PC that comes with pedals, etc...? This would just make it more complicated to be portable, but would make it alot more realistic. Either way, this mod'll be awesome!
Duste, Thats the plan. The shifter controls reverse. Pull back on it and push down on the gas pedal and the car will reverse. I'm not sure it would be possible to controll an r/c car while only using the shift knob. Take a look at one of the older videos, you can see the wheel and pedals in action. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0dXIWr5F9k Here are all vids related to this project: all vids
