Radio Controlled Minnie Mouse Quad

Some time ago I found in the curb a Minnie Mouse Quad, I couldn’t believe that someone just dropped that, it such good condition.. Only in Canada!

But well, this project is about making that Minnie Mouse Quad radio controlled.

Why would I want to do that?

First: My daughter, the Quad and me frequently go to the park one block from home to ride it. We don’t take the stroller, as we have the quad for her to ride. After five minutes she get bored of riding it.. Now I have to carry home my daughter and the quad… Wouldn’t it be nice to just sit my daughter in the quad and drive it home? Or at least only carry her?

Second: Its cool to drive such a big car remotely!

So lets get started

You can probably get based on this project to convert any kind of toddler vehicle to Radio Control. If that’s the case, please share some pics of your project, I’d love to see it!

The benefit of using an already electric car, is that I don’t need to worry much about power and adding a motor as those are already there and working.

The main issue here, is controlling the stearing remotely. For that, I designed a servo linear actuator, that produces the same movement the stearing wheel would.

You can find the thing here: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2852688

Once this is installed (as you can see it is done in the pics), the only remaining thing is to re work the connections, so we can control the motor from both the driver activated button, and the remote control receiver.

This is the circuit as it used to be before my changes:

And this is how it ended up looking: