Custom RC Car LED Underlights

Introduction:

In this project, we modded an RC car. We gave the car very fast and furious-esque under lights. The effect is greatly enhanced if it's used in a dark room or at night. This project requires some soldering skills and very little but some knowledge of Arduino. You might not have all of the same materials as us but this project is pretty customizable.

You will Need-

- 1x Rc car (We used a 1/16th sized McLaren)

- 1x Arduino Uno (If you need more space use an Adafruit Feather)

- A breadboard

- Jumper wire

- 5-volt voltage regulator

- Crimps and crimpers

- Soldering iron and solder

First solder the neopixels together. Our red wire was 5v our white wire was the digital signal and our Black wire was ground. Make sure that the arrows on all the neopixles are facing the same direction. Map out on the car where you want the neopixles, we put 4 in the front 2 on either side and 2 in the back. After soldering coat the solder in a layer of hot glue.

We hooked the ground to the "gnd" the 5v to the "vin" and the digital to the 8. We did this all through a breadboard.

When you start programming the arduino, follow this guide https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-neopixel-uberg.... To change the color of the strip, change the numbers in the line strip.setPixelColor(11, 255, 0, 255);.

We attached using a thick layer of hot glue. Putting it both over the neopixels and over the wire once we bent in to avoid going outside the frame of the car. Put lots of hot glue to secure it but make sure it is not so thick that it will touch the ground when it drives. The reason the car is red in this photo is because we fried the controller of this car and had to switch to the blue car.

That's pretty much it. It's a pretty easy project if you have the materials. It's really fun and makes the RC car look really cool. Comment and Vote!