RC cars are fun to play with, but they’re usually limited by the range of the controller’s antenna. The small size of the Raspberry Pi make it an ideal component with which to play around and try to extend that range from a few hundred feet to anywhere on the planet. On IBM’s WebSphere Application Server development community site, some engineers have posted a home-made RC car with the Pi in charge of steering, and accelerating, all done through WiFi. The setup is fully self-contained, with the battery powering the diminutive computer as well as the car itself. As long as the Pi is receiving a strong Wi-Fi signal from somewhere and you know how to configure port forwarding, you can drive this thing from anywhere on the planet. Heck, you could possibly even drive it from the International Space Station.
This is, of course, just a project and not a commercial application. But knowing it can be done is a good first step towards an era of universally controllable toy cars, which in our opinion would totally rock.
VIA [ Geek.com ]
