Shopping List

Alright so to complete this project you will need the following things…

Hardware

You’ll quite a bit of hardware to complete this project. I’m lazy, so I bought quite a lot of the hardware because I’m too lazy to make them my self.

A Tamiya Remote Control Car

I brought this one because I’m a flash bastard and I have a creepy obsession with the Nissan GT-R (I know it’s not real)…

purchased from: http://www.modelzone.co.uk/rc_nissan_gtr_tt01e-details.htm

I don’t know whether this project will work on any other R/C car, I have a Tamiya so I know that it works on that, I guess as long as the car has standard servo’s it should work, you don’t have to go crazy and buy a really expensive one, a second hand one will do. We’ll be trying this with a helicopter once the car has been completed!

Remember, often the R/C car doesn’t come with any Servo’s or a battery, so you’ll have to purchase that separately. you can get one on the cheap from eBay usually.

An Arduino Board

I brought the kit version with all of the components, but you don’t have to do this. It’ll save you about £20 if you don’t.

purchased from: http://www.coolcomponents.co.uk/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=50&products_id=115

This will be the bridge between your LaFonera+ router and your car’s servo’s/speed controller we’ll use the Arduino board to control the throttle, direction of your car and hopefully the lights if you’ve got an R/C car with an LED kit.

You no longer need the components below! The WiShield from Asynch Labs will replace these with ease!

A LaFonera+ Router

purchased from: https://shop.fon.com/FonShop/shop/GB/ShopController?view=product&product=PRD-019

This will be the bridge between your wireless device, wired IP camera and your Arduino board.

A USB – Serial TTL 3.3v Cable

purchased from: http://www.coolcomponents.co.uk/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=356

This is needed to flash your LaFonera+ Router with DD-WRT which will allow you to SSH into the LaFonera+ and communicate with your Arduino board over a serial connection. You can use this later to do a variety of hackery with other electronic devices.

Lots of jumper wires

purchased from: http://www.coolcomponents.co.uk/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=48_49&products_id=355

and… http://www.coolcomponents.co.uk/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=48_49&products_id=175

We’ll use these to connect the different devices up without having to destroy them through soldering.

A Breadboard

If you order the Arduino kit it should be included, else you can get one from here…

purchased from: http://www.coolcomponents.co.uk/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=48&products_id=174

This will be used for prototyping our circuitry before we solder everything!

Software

The instructions are all carried out on a mac, but some steps have support for PC, so you can do this project on a Windows based machine too!

Terminal/PuTTY

download from: http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html

We’ll use Terminal/PuTTY to flash the LaFonera+ Router and to SSH into the LaFonera+ after it has been flashed. Terminal is built into the mac and you can download PuTTY for Windows here http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html (FYI download putty.exe for your flavour of Windows) you can also use the pre-installed HyperTerminal for Windows, but I found it a bit shit to be honest.

DD-WRT

download from: http://www.dd-wrt.com/site/support/router-database

You will need to download linux.bin from DD-WRT you just need to find your models files from here http://www.dd-wrt.com/site/support/router-database, you’ll find the model number on the back of the router. My suggestion is to ignore the flashing guide on DD-WRT’s Wiki, I followed it… 15 times with no success, so I did it my own way… it didn’t take long and worked first time! At the time of writing the current version for the LaFonera+ 2201 was v24 preSP2 [Beta] Build: 13064 (recommended). It may have changed, if you have issues please comment on this page.

Arduino IDE

download from: http://arduino.cc/en/Main/Software

You’ll need this to write sketches (tiney tiny apps in layman’s terms) for the Arduino.

As you can see it’s a fair bit of kit, but if you look in the right places it shouldn’t cost you much. The most expensive part has been and will always be the car itself, don’t go overboard like I have, I just wanted mine to look shit hot for my dissertation. I don’t know whether this will work with a Nitro/Petrol car, but I will be trying it at some point soon.