Remote-Controlled RC Car

Built with Sarah Rodrigues and Helen Chang.

Overview

A ground-up remote-controlled car that lives at the intersection of electrical and mechanical design. It’s driven by a brushless motor for rear-wheel drive and a servo on the front wheels for steering — and nearly every part, from the circuit boards to the chassis, was designed and fabricated by hand.

The electrical side

I got access to a Voltera circuit board printer, which let me design, print, and test my own custom PCBs for this project rather than relying on off-the-shelf boards. Learning the print-and-test loop — laying out traces, printing, reflowing, and debugging the physical board — was one of the most rewarding parts of the build.

The drivetrain runs on a brushless motor (rear-wheel drive), controlled alongside the steering servo from an Arduino.

The mechanical side

The car uses Ackermann steering — the geometry that lets the inner and outer front wheels turn at slightly different angles so all four wheels trace clean arcs through a turn. Figuring out how to actually build that linkage was a genuinely interesting design challenge.

Structural and custom parts were 3D printed, modeled in Autodesk Fusion.

What I learned

• Printing and debugging my own circuit boards on the Voltera.
• Driving a brushless motor + servo from an Arduino.
• Translating Ackermann steering from geometry into a working linkage.
• Iterating between CAD, print, and physical test.