The appeal of RC toys is not limited to kids. There are teenagers and adults who are too fascinated with it and some of them are professionally into RC car racing as well.
If you are here, you too probably are interested in RC cars and want to know how are they controlled with the controllers/transmitters on your hands. Hang on with us and all your curiosity will be addressed within minutes.
In this article, we will go through the basics of radio controls. You will learn how RC transmitter and receiver work on RC cars and other RC vehicles and what are different components required for them to operate successfully.
Origin
Radio waves were naturally generated through lightning and other astronomical phenomena. But in the 19th century, scientists cracked a way to generate these waves through electric currents.
It paved a way for radio communication and you see its uses from TV remotes to mobile phones where things can be controlled wirelessly. Today, things, as big as flying jets and space rockets also use this technology.
Parts Of RC cars system
Radio communication systems have these 4 major components:
- Transmitter– That remote thing in your hands that you use to control the car contains this transmitter.
- Receiver– This receiver fits in the car that receives signals from the transmitter. These receivers have a main part for channeling the commands.
- Motor– Motor makes the toy move after receiving the commands.
- Power Source– Motor requires power source to move the RC vehicle. The power source are in two forms, rechargeable batteries and non-rechargeable baateries of different types.
How Radio control works in Your Racing Toys
There is a range of combinations called electrical pulses through which the transmitter sends different signals to the receiver. It uses a power source to perform the task. Transmitters can have a single controller or a lot of functions.
The single controller transmitter will only make your car go forward and backward. The multi-function transmitter can have several levels of controls i.e forward, reverse, forward and left, forward and right, reverse and left, reverse and right.
After the transmitter sends the signals relating to a specific frequency, the antenna of the receiver catches these signals. Different signals are identified by the antenna after specific electric command from transmitter. These identified commands are sent to the circuit.
Then the circuit board transforms all the commanding signals into action and your car performs the tasks accordingly. Here also, the power source allows the motor and other parts to operate.
Conclusion
The transmitter and receiver works on RF module and to know more about it, you can read on EngineersGarage.
So, this was a brief description of how RC transmitters and Receivers work on RC cars. Most of the radio control transmitters and receivers operate on 27 MHz or 49 MHz frequencies. If there are 2 remote controls of the same frequencies, they will interfere with each other’s signals.
