Super new to the world of Arduinio. I had this crazy idea for an art project and after lots of research it looked like the Arduino was the best option to go to interface my laptop to control the car. I've found documentation on how to build the car and get the Arduino in a talking state for the most part at the following sites:
The only problem is that the New Bright RC Car I bought doesn't have the Rx2 chip that is mentioned. The pin I have reads R 288 2 0608
So that I can learn and understand what I'm doing, I'd like a push in the right direction if possible.
I'm not sure how I would even go to find the leads. Would I use a multimeter, or a DC power supply with variable volts/amps? Wouldn't I need to supply power to certain parts of the circuit to see what that does?
I have a Lab DC Power Supply with variable volts and amps, could I use this to determine where the circuits are? If so, what should I turn the volts to? Would I use the same volts of the battery of the rc car, 9.6v?
Thanks so much in advance, and I apologize if this is basic stuff. I tried to search before posting and couldn't find anything.
If you have the remote control, try using a multimeter between ground (battery -) and a pin to see what control on the remote causes that pin to change. There should not be very many pins that change state.
If you don't have the remote, look on the circuit board for the pins that connect to transistors (usually through a resistor). Those are the pins that control the transistor switches and H-bridges that drive the motors.
djcronos:
Thank you so much. I am going to pick up a multimeter tomorrow and try that. I do in fact have the remote control.
Thanks again!
Actually - you might want to work backwards from the actuators/motors, and trace the connections back thru the control circuits, which are most likely h-bridges of some sort. As long as you know the general configuration of what an h-bridge schematically (and somewhat physically) looks like, you should be able to find the two input pins (beyond the base/gate current-limit resistors), which should then (likely) lead straight to the chip.
Once you have found those, and have marked them in some manner (say, by soldering wires on or such), then you just need to find out what voltage the chip is outputting to them; once you know that (and where to get that voltage on the board - it might be a regulated voltage, or it might be straight from the battery), you can then (likely) clip those pins from the chip (so the chip no longer controls the drivers).