Hacks involving toys.
Brian Henderson had built quite a few car hack projects. He has found that the very popular chips that are used in cheap RC car controllers have an extra unused output. He connects a button onto the remote and buffers the output from the controller on the car to allow him to power the toy gun. He uses a nerf gun for the first hack and an airsoft gun
Long time maker Bob Davis has made a Robo-Raptor that is controlled by an Arduino. When the stock electronics in a product don’t do what you want just hack some new brains into them! This robot is from the pages of his book, Arduino Robotics Projects.
Using a Parallax Propeller chip Luis created a way to add some realism to his RC truck. Hazard lights flash and even make the clicking relay sound when activated. The propeller plays the wav files that bring the truck to life. Nice effect when the truck starts moving, you can hear the motor start to pick up speed. There is a product called sound racer that lets you bring your
There are a ton of these tiny RC Helicopters around, lots of them use IR light to send signals from the remote to the RC Helicopter. Arduino versus Evil took one apart to see what makes it tick. The helicopter doesn’t have much payload capability but it seems to be quite nimble. Since it is just IR it should be simple to reverse engineer the commands for various movements.
 RC cars are fun but why let the fun end at driving it around with the supplied remote? Shazin Sadakath got a car and tore it apart to see what made it tick. He took an Arduino and was able to hack it into the car circuit to be able to control all of the car functions with the digital IO Arduino pins. After learning how to interface
 ScratchBuiltAircraft had some extra parts laying around and decided to slap together a quick RC Hovercraft. It looks very controllable even though the control system is a simply small serve that deflects the air. Looks like the heavy duty garbage bag does a good job and sure keeps the cost down!  “Electronics: 70mm EDF 60amp ESC 1x 9gram servo 4cell 3000mah LIPO Battery Deans extension Turnigy 9x  TX/RX
Our friend Rodger Cleye just sent in his latest creation. The Thunderball V2 is a Heavy Lift Bicopter that can lift 13lbs! It was built from PVC, bolts tie-wrap and tape. The mannequin makes it look great. I think if this was launched from a platform that allowed the copter to launch with the mannequin legs to remain in the standing stance it would look totally amazing. I am
