BottleBoat - Low Cost DIY Recycled RC Water Vehicle

Summer is here, and it’s time to show you how we can bring the fun when the kids are on holidays.

It's here our RC water vehicle! Bottle Boat.This project is about building a RC boat of you own and also making your own transmitter and receiver controller.

How to make it? Well that's why we are here so go to step one and I will tell you what you need.

We hope you will like it.

Let's start!

Here you can find one of the STEM craft projects that we have developed for our spanish summer camp for inventors: InventaLand 2019.

https://academiadeinventores.com/inventaland-colon...

InventaLand a STEM Summer program that turns curious students into innovative thinkers,

You will need some materials for this project:

• RF 27MHZ/40MHZ 2 channels emitter/receiver controller
• 2x Geared TT 130 motor DC3V-6V
• 2x Battery holder
• Wood sticks

You can find all materials in Amazon or Aliexpress. There are not expensive.

Other recycled materials:

• Buttons (old keyboard)
• Bottles

And some tools:

• Screwdriver
• Hot glue gun
• Glue gun sticks
• Solder
• 3D printer

On the image you can find the module that we will use for the right functioning of the boat.

It is a basic RF 27 or 40 MHZ emitter/receiver controller with 2 channel. We will use each channel to control both turbines in our boat. It is an amazing circuit and so cheap.

We want to recycle several components in our project so we will use a old keyboard in order to unsolder 4 buttons that will control our boat.

First we need to setup the motor controller connections to the receiver board,

Construct the receiver according to the Fritzing diagram and Schematic. The boat uses two DC motors to provide differential steering and propulsion

For motors;

• GND ---- B-
• VCC ---- B+
• Motor R ---- B/F
• Motor L ---- R/L

Then we will build the joystick controlled transmitter unit. The joystick is used to control the direction and speed of the boat.

Construct the circuit using the schematic and fritzing diagram as a reference.

When we move the joystick to right, right motor works inside, left motor works outside and it will turn right easily.It will work with two motors and will be fast.When we leave from joystick, motors will stop.

We use 2 battery holders, one to power the electronics emiter and the other to power the motors and receiver.

The batteries had a desired weight that provided a center of gravity to my boat. If you're using lighter batteries you might have to add some weights to provide a center mass.

Insert the electronics and make the required connections. Then happily control the boat using the transmitter unit.

We have designed a specific 3D printer parts to create the turbines.

Use hot glue and pieces of wood stick to create them.

To construct the boat, I used a 2 plastic bottles. You should use hot silicon for paste them each other.We will paste bottles stick to the corners of wood.Close the covers of bottles.I used too with motors, you should paste them stronger.

Attach the motors to the bottom end of the bottle. You can secure them using cable ties and hot glue. I used hot glue and a silicone gasket maker to plug the holes for waterproofing.

Out bottle boat is ready to drive in the swimming pool! :)