Connecting RC remote to Arduino

arduinopower supplyremote controlwireless

I found a old RC Car. I'm electronic begginer, so my question might be dump, but I can't figure out how I can do this. I Separated the remote and connected it's power to the Arduino board.

At this time the project looks like this: ( It's working )
enter image description here

My goal:

enter image description here

The Problem:

The buttons are connected to the chip and to the ground. If the button was connecting the 3.3v to the chip, it was going to be fine, I was just going to do as the picture ( My goal ) above, but now I don't know how I can accomplish my goal. My question is how I can switch pins between ground and "chain breaker" ?

Best Answer

I fixed my problem by switching the pinMode like this:

void on(int btn) {
    pinMode(btn, OUTPUT);
    digitalWrite(btn, LOW);
}

void off(int btn) {
    pinMode(btn, INPUT);
}

void setup() {
    off(13);
}

void loop() {
    on(13);
    delay(1000);
    off(13);
    delay(1000);
}

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Arduino to act as a switch for a remote

Get your multimeter and find out how the switches are connected and if they are pull up or pull down. Also measure the voltage. So if a switch does a pull up to 5V you can just connect your arduino and output a HIGH. If its a 12V signal or sth that isn't supported by the arduino make the arduino turn on a transistor which then switches 12V to the switch. Vice versa for a pull down.

Electronic – Arduino: Controlling a RC car remote

If you want to control the car from the PC via the Arduino you'll have to setup the serial port to receive the commands and output a PWM signal to emulate the potmeters.

I'm not really an Arduino man, but your code should look a bit like this. It receives + and - commands from the PC and increases or decreases the virtual potmeter position. Note that this is just a framework; there's no testing for minimum or maximum position, for instance.

const int analogOutPin = 9; // Analog output pin that the LED is attached to

int outputValue = 0;        // value output to the PWM (analog out)

void setup() {
  // initialize serial communications at 9600 bps:
  Serial.begin(9600);
}

void loop() {
  if ( Serial.available()) {
    char ch = Serial.read();

    switch(ch) {
      case '+':
        outputValue+;
        break;
      case '-':
        outputValue-;
        break;
    }
  }

  // change the analog out value:
  analogWrite(analogOutPin, outputValue);   
}

Filter the output signal with an RC filter. This will give you a voltage between 0 V and 5 V. Measure the voltage range of the potmeters and report back. It's possible that you'll have to amplify the signal.

edit after the updated info in the question
Nice! So the potmeters give you an output range from 0 V to 5 V, which is exactly what the Arduino's output will do as well. So you can use the analogWrite function like in the example code above. Note that the Arduino guys call it "analog", but the AVR doesn't have an analog output, so it's probably just PWM. The Arduino doesn't have an RC-filter to make it DC, so you'll have to add the resistor and capacitor yourself.

enter image description here

A value of 100 kΩ for the resistor, and 1 µF for the capacitor are probably OK.

edit after your measurements and comment
The arrows on the RC filter schematic indicate a voltage. The arrowhead points to the signal whose value you want to measure, the back end of the arrow to the reference you're measuring against, which is usually ground. So if you would connect the ground pin of a scope's probe to the lower connection, and the probe's tip to \$V_{IN}\$ you'd see the Arduino's PWM output. Probe at \$V_{OUT}\$ and the PWM will be averaged to a DC voltage with some ripple. That's what we want if we want to emulate the potmeters.

If I understand correctly the black and yellow wires carry the potmeters' values, and are referenced to the red wire, which is +5 V. (This is confusing; black is generally accepted to be ground!). You can look for ground on the PCB, but we can use the +5 V reference too, we'll just have to flip the filter upside down:

enter image description here

The top line is your red wire. \$V_{IN}\$ is the output from the Arduino, you have two of those. \$V_{OUT}\$ for one of those goes to the black wire, the other output to the yellow one.

Best Answer

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Electronic – Arduino: Controlling a RC car remote

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