By following this instructable you can easily control an RC Car with an Arduino Uno. We will be using an Arduino Uno to send 5V outputs to the RC Car's radio transmitter. The RC Car we used was a "Build Your Own Radio Control Car" from 2008, however this should work for any RC Car.

Step 1: Gather Your Materials

What you'll need:

1. RC car (need to have radio transmitter located inside of the RC Car's controller)

2. Arduino Uno

3. Soldering equipment

4. AA Batteries

5. Bread Board

Step 2: Assemble RC Car

In this step ( if you have a "build your own" RC Car) you will assemble your RC Car. To connect our wires together we twisted them together and then used heat shrink tubing to seal the connection.

Step 3: Hacking Radio Transmitter

In this step you will remove circuit board that is responsible for transmitting the radio frequencies that control your RC Car from the controller. For our circuit board we soldered wires to the connections points that control the movement inputs of the RC Car. We will later use these wires to connect the transmitter to our Arduino Uno.

Step 4: Code the Arduino

You can use this code to make the car drive in circles. You can use this code as a base for programming the car to drive in certain patterns or a track.

void setup()
{

pinMode(13, OUTPUT); // sets the digital pin 13 as output }

void loop()

{

digitalWrite(13, HIGH); // sets the digital pin 13 on

delay(2000); // waits for a second

digitalWrite(13, LOW); // sets the digital pin 13 off

delay(10);

digitalWrite(12, HIGH);

delay(1);

// waits for a second

}

Step 5: Hooking Up the Circuit

After coding the Arduino, you are ready to make the connections with the wires. To make the car turn left, the wire attached from the copper pad indicating left should be put into the junction on the breadboard that goes to the port in the Arduino marked ground, and the wire coming from the copper pad labelled right goes into pin 13 on the Arduino. To get the car to go forward, repeat the same step where the forward pad is hooked into the junction going to ground and the reverse pad is connected into pin 12 on the Arduino.

Step 6: Running the Program

You should be ready to run the program. To do this, simply upload your code to the Arduino and be sure the RC car and radio transmitter are on.