RC Truck Controlled by Arduino

Using Arduino Project Guidance
1

Hello all,
I am new to this forum and have come to you because I have nowhere else to go! I hope you can help me!
OK so I bought this old "Intruder" Radio Shack radio controlled truck at a garage sale. I was hoping to interface it with my arduino duemilanove and control it with either a wifi or bluetooth shield as some others have done:
http://www.arduino.cc/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1194054658
http://www.arduino.cc/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1286526673

but... the car's circuit board does not appear to have the usual Realtek Rx2/Tx2 chip...

Here are some pics of the board:

There seem to be three chip-like things near the center of the board but I have no idea what their function is. There also are two large metal objects in the right hand side of the board, which I am fairly certain are the H-Bridges. However, I am lost on where to go from here.

I don't have much experience with these kinds of "electrical engineering" things or with my Arduino in general - I'm still in high school; however I'm always ready to learn!

I hope you guys can help me and thank you so much in advance!

2

You could start by transcribing the chip numbers, and applying a little Google.
Do you have access to, and know how to use an oscilloscope?

3

The four "things" connected to the metal heatsinks are probably power transitors of ome kind, since their designators are Q13 -15.

They probably serve the same purpose as an H bridge.

How many motors are there in the truck ? How many servos?

It is probably easier to just ditch the control electronics and let your Arduino control the motors and servos.

Mikael

4

The truck has one motor in the rear that provides locomotive power, and one servo in the front, which controls steering.

However, there is one thing that confuses me about the servo - it has 6 wires leading to it from the circuit board. I have no idea what the extra 4 are for.

Also, to connect the motor and servo directly to the Arduino, I would need to get either a motor controller shield or a motor controller, right? Which would you reccomend?

5

You don't need a motoshield, it can come in handy, but all you really need is a H bridge IC that can handle the current for the DC motor.

Try to Google "arduino l293" or "arduino H bridge" or maybe "arduino DC motor"

That should give you tons of info on controlling a DC motor without the shield. The crusial info is how much current does the motor draw?

As far as i remember the servo can be controlled directly from Arduino.