Hi, I am planning on trying to control an rc car using an arduino. To do this I intend on wiring up the arduino to the rc cars controller and then controlling that from the computer. But the thing is though, I have no idea how to do this ... (I am a complete beginner at this sort of thing but intend to learn)
The rc cars controller has two joysticks. One for forwards/backwards and one for left/right. When I push the joystick it pushes two pieces of metal together completing the circuit. This is basically as far as I know so if someone could tell me how I would go about wiring up the controller and then writing the code to control it with the arduino and my computer keyboard I would really appreciate it.
You need to find out how those switches are wired: the collector of the optoisolator needs to be wired to the more-positive terminal, and the emitter (the terminal with the arrowhead on it) to the more-negative one. If it's wired backwards, you'll probably wind up letting out the magic smoke.
It's possible (but not likely) that the switch is controlling more current than the optoisolator can handle. That's another way that the chip could get fried. Don't worry about it a lot, but be aware that it's a small possibility that you'll need a fallback plan.
one other thought: I did the same thing with an rc dragonfly flyer. Poking around I found that the voltage at the joystick leads was under 5 volts and one side was ground. I used my arduino pins to control it by setting them to INPUT and HIGH for switch open and OUTPUT/LOW for closed. worked a treat. My joysticks were not just simple switches by the way there were (I think) four leads that got switched together in multiple combinations but the principle was the same.
