making a simple little radio controlled robot truck

[giddy]

hi,

So after 5 years of programming I decided to buy electronics for
dummies a few days ago.

I've covered more than 1/4th of the book, it doesn't however have
anything on a radio control kit.

I managed to find a nice Radio Shack like shop near my place, they
said they have RC kits but they asked me what kind i wanted!??

Could someone help me on this, I want to be able to send quite a few
messages to the Truck besides direction, also, what kind of motors do
i use for things like steering the forward wheels, or a little crane?
are servos any good? and if my primary motor is controlled by via AC
adapter, can I hook up two 9V batteries to power it?

Lastly would anyone know how I make design a little missile launcher
that I could control via Radio?

Also any suggestions about what I should use for the exterior? I was
thinking think ply wood?

Originally I wanted to make a little helicopter(I know a little about
aerodynamics) I hope this will get me close to that, eventually I want
to stuff in a micro controller so I can program the little vehicle, so
is it possible to make a common internal design that I could fit into
something else?

Thanks so much
Gideon

 

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Could someone help me on this, I want to be able to send quite a few
messages to the Truck besides direction, also, what kind of motors do
i use for things like steering the forward wheels, or a little crane?
are servos any good? and if my primary motor is controlled by via AC
adapter, can I hook up two 9V batteries to power it?

Also any suggestions about what I should use for the exterior? I was
thinking think ply wood?

Several things you should do:

- Buy some cheap radio controlled toys at the toy store and take them
apart. See how they solve these problems.

- Visit a hobby shop that sells more serious radio controlled cars and
models aimed at teenagers and adults. See the more complicated and
expensive solutions used there (for example, proportional servos).
Even if you don't have a store like this, there are a lot of mail
order and online catalogs that would be educational. (for example,
www.towerhobbies.com) You will also learn some things about
structure there - for example, many cars are a tough chassis of fiber-
filled plastic (or in the past, machined aluminum) that carriers all
the components, with a lightweight vacuum-molded plastic shell that
mounts on top. You can do vacuum forming at home.

- Decide if you want bang-bang controls, traditional pulse width
modulated proportional controls (sequence of pulses one for each
control channel, width of pulse indicates position), or if you want to
send "messages" to a microcontroller which may simply decode them, or
possibly execute more complicated 'robotic' functions