How to Install Your RoboHeart Hercules Into a RC Car

With RoboHeart you can upgrade your old RC model and bring it into the modern age of Smartphones and Augmented Reality.

Your old car has actually most of the things already included you just need to do a Heart Transplant. You replace the old circuit board inside the car with a brand new RoboHeart!

You don’t need a soldering station for this!

Most of the supplies are available in our bundle on Kickstarter, check this out:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/augmented-robotics/robohearttm-by-augmented-robotics

1. RoboHeart Hercules (available on Kickstarter)
2. RC car (in this example a Revell Monster Truck from our Kickstarter bundle)
3. Philipps screwdriver and slotted screwdriver 2mm (available in Kickstarter bundle)
4. Spacers with respective nuts 2mm - quantity 4 (available in Kickstarter bundle)
5. Wires AWG 22-28 with 15 cm length - quantity 2 (available in Kickstarter bundle)
6. Luster clamps - quantity 2 (available in Kickstarter bundle)
7. One LiPo battery with JST-PH 2.0 connector (available as add-on on Kickstarter)
8. Glue gun
9. Knife or deisolation tool

There is a step by step guide on Instructables! Check that out if you haven't already: https://www.instructables.com/Your-Guide-to-Installing-the-RoboHeart-Arduino-Lib/

We are using a Monster Truck RC model from Revell. You can find this in a bundle on Kickstarter (with other RC options as well).

1. First, let's remove the casing to reveal the old circuit board. Do this by unscrewing the four screws marked in the picture.
2. A normal Phillips 2-3mm screwdriver does the trick (a Phillips screwdriver is included in the bundle).
3. When you are finished, there should be 4 screws left.
4. You can now remove the top of your RC model.

1. You will see that a black wire connects the upper half to the lower half, but we don’t need this wire anymore! You can either cut it or desolder it (see picture 1 & 2)
2. Now you will see that the old circuit board is connected with some wires to the lower half of the model car. Unscrew it with the same screwdriver (picture 3)
3. You should have one screw remaining! (picture 4)

When you turn around the old circuit board you will see that it is connected to the motors and to the battery compartment.

1. You can either desolder or cut these wires. Make sure to leave as much wire as possible, as we will need those for later.
2. You should now have the old circuit board next to you (with a bunch of wires dangling around!)

1. One of the red wires goes from the battery compartment to the switch. It needs to be disconnected from the battery compartment, but it must be still attached to the switch (picture 1)
2. Now cut the cable (picture 2)

We care about RoboHeart is designed in a way that we can reuse as much as possible from the old car, such as the motors and the switch. 

If you have used the option to cut the wires, rather than soldering, you will need to de-isolate the tips of the wires (you need to see bare copper at the end so we can connect these wires to the RoboHeart later). This can also be done with a cutter or with a convenient deisolation tool, if you have one at home.

The last black wire from the battery compartment must be removed! (picture 3)

Every RC model is different, and the old RC model doesn’t know that it can be upgraded with RoboHeart. So, before we can start building in the RoboHeart, we need to prepare a nice place for it inside the old RC model. There might some plastic knobs in the way which can obstruct the integration of RoboHeart.

For this you need to cut all the plastic knobs.

1. Now we can start fixing the RoboHeart inside the car. For this we have decided to use a glue gun. We just put four glue “blobs” in every corner. This should match the RoboHeart’s mounting holes.
2. Now you see on the RoboHeart’s bottom side there are four spacers attached. (Spacers and nuts are included in the bundles)
3. Top View of the spacers and nuts respectively. (Spacers and nuts are included in the bundles)
4. You now carefully put the RoboHeart with the spacers into the glue. Wait ca. 20 minutes for the glue to harden.

1. The two red wires which are connected to the switch are a bit short, so we need to extend them a little. For this you need an additional piece of wire and then you can twist the wires together, or use luster clamps, or solder them together. (Luster clamps are included in the bundle) (picture 1)
2. Now you can start connecting the motor wires to the RoboHeart’s screw terminal. You will need a 2mm slotted screwdriver for this. (Slotted screwdriver is included in the bundle) (picture 2)
3. This is the end result. Pay attention to the colour coding of the wires, they must be connected in the same order as seen on the picture. If you make a mistake here, don’t worry, nothing bad will happen you just might end up with flipped controls. (picture 3)
4. Now you connect both red wires from the switch to the black screw terminal. It doesn’t matter in which order you connect them.(picture 4)
5. This is how the connections should look like in the end (picture 5)

1. Now, we are almost done! The power source is still missing. We need a LiPo battery with a JST-PH connector for this. (You can include a battery as an add-on on Kickstarter and we will ship the bundle with a compatible battery to you!) (picture 1)
2. If you remember from the previous steps, we have connected the switch of the car to the RoboHeart. So,now we can use the switch of the car to turn it on.
3. Success! The RoboHeart is on! You can see the LED indicators are glowing.

You can then proceed to remove the battery holder. You will now have plenty of space in your car model for another battery.

You can now use the battery compartment to store the LiPo, which is needed to Power the RoboHeart. You can use one of the holes inside the compartment to route the battery cable to the RoboHeart

Now you put the upper half of the car back on. Pay attention that both of the halves align properly. You use the four screws from the beginning of this tutorial to complete your car.

Now that you have re-built the car with RoboHeart inside it. You can control the car with your smartphone. We have an open-source app available on Playstore.

You could also get the Augmented Reality game if you are purchasing the bundles on Kickstarter. Check out the next Tutorial on How To Play The AR game and control the RoboHeart with your Smartphone!