Tiny Bluetooth Car

This was my third project and my first really big one that took months and many revisions.

The original idea was to create an RC car completely inside an existing hotwheels car so that it was basicly a motorized hotwheel. Sounds super cool, but practically it would have been horrible to build.

But I was determined to do this, and found a spacious hotwheel that could conceal my components:

XIAO ESP32 S3: An extremely small esp32 unit WITH a camera Dual shafted miniture motor: for back wheels battery: two batteries wired in parallel to increase capacity Linear servo: this would control the direction of the front wheels

After considering all the wiring and the modification I would need to add to the Hotwheel, I decided it was easier to create my own 3D Printed chassis. The problem: I had never used CAD in my life.

I downloaded the education edition of Fusion 360, and followed tutorials, after weeks I was able to model a chassis that was spacious yet still compact. I printed it out at the local library.

After adding all the components to my frame, I wired up the various parts:

Motor driver -> motor ESP32 -> motor driver battery -> ESP32 ESP32 -> linear servo etc...

The final result had to be modded and tweaked in code so that it could work, but finally after months of working on the project, the car could drive around and turn. It was an awesome moment for me and showed I could tackle physically constrained systems and new tools.

What I Learned

I learned in depth how H-bridges worked
Learned in depth Bluetooth communication
How to use LIPO batteries
How to use CAD (fusion 360)

What I Learned

Images