While outside in a local park recently I came upon what was left of a small styrofoam-based R/C plane. The fuselage, wings and tail section were broken beyond repair but most of the electronic and mechanical components were still intact, except for the battery. Specifically, the receiver with attached servo motors, the main motor with gearbox and propeller, and connecting wires.
Looking around I couldn't see anyone it might have belonged to and it appeared to have been abandoned, so I yanked out these parts and took them home. After some googling using identifying information on these parts, I determined that the plane is most likely this one, or perhaps an earlier version of it since the propeller I found didn't have a built-on cowling:
Horizon Hobby Champ RTF (HBZ4900)
I pulled the wires that connected the main motor to the receiver unit and tested it with an AA battery, and it spun right away, and appeared to be in good condition. Even the propeller was in decent shape, not seriously bent or imbalanced when it spun. So it looks like I found some decent salvage parts to use in a future project, either a plane, or, more likely, an air boat or propeller-driven cart, controlled by an Arduino Nano, Micro Pro or perhaps even Attiny85, once I figure out the proper voltage and current range.
The problem is that the connector that connects the main motor to the receiver is not a standard one in Arduino world. It has just two pins, each around 3-4mm long and 1.3mm apart, around half the standard 2.54mm pin distance of most breadboards, perfboards and headers. So I'm not sure how to use it since I have no connectors they can connect to. I had to use microhook test leads to test them.
I suppose that I could cut off the connectors and connect Arduino-standard ones, but the wires are really thin and not very long, plus I'd prefer to use the connectors that came with these parts. Does anyone know what kinds of connectors these are, that I imagine are standard in the R/C world, at least for smaller planes such as this one, and where I can buy them? Does anyone make adapters that allow you to use them with Arduino-standard headers and such?
Btw, I'm not sure what to do with the receiver. I don't have the transmitter, and they're more expensive than I'd like to lay out right now. I used to build and fly R/C planes and still have my old transmitter, but that was decades ago, when everything was analog, and there's no way it would work with this without major upgrades. Are there R/C transmitter breakout boards or modules that work with modern digital R/C receivers, that can be programmed to control such receivers, including frequency selection and signal encryption, that can also work with Arduino? It would be awesome if there were.