got free stuff what to do with it?

[themadhacker]

Today, my grandpa's friend gave him a bunch of his kids' ( they were kids. the youngest is 17 now) old stuff to give to me for salvaging. The stuff includes :

5 old remote controll vehicles
1 drill with a rusted head
1 old electric sander
1 ni-cd battery carger that outputs different voltages
3 power adapters (probably for the cars' batterys)
2 ni-cd batterys. (probably no good, because of being several years old, and because one is corrroded really bad.)

plus my grandfather says there is more stuff at his house. I am trying to think of something to make out of the remote control cars, but am not having much luck. Perhaps if any are functional, I will make a remote controlled robot out of them.

So what are your ideas on what to make with this stuff?

[vskid]

Build one of these.

[themadhacker]

good idea. If I can aquire all the parts, I might do that.

[gamecube6]

Sounds like the ingredients for a super-hyper-ultra-mega-happy fighting robot to me.

[vskid]

The problem with making a robot is the limited amount of frequencies the car use. Generally you can only run two cars at the same time, one 27MHz and one 49MHz (sometimes two cars of the "same frequency" are just different enough that they'll work at the same time). That would limit you to 4 channels with most el cheapo RC cars, 4 motors with two directions each. Still enough to make a robot, but it kinda puts a limit on what you can do.
So you can make 2 robots (two cars each) and the hamster ball...thing with the 5 cars you have. A swarm of hamster balls would be extra cool.

[XCVG]

Make 2 battle robots and FIGHT!

[nitro2k01]

The problem with making a robot is the limited amount of frequencies the car use. Generally you can only run two cars at the same time, one 27MHz and one 49MHz (sometimes two cars of the "same frequency" are just different enough that they'll work at the same time). That would limit you to 4 channels with most el cheapo RC cars, 4 motors with two directions each. Still enough to make a robot, but it kinda puts a limit on what you can do.
So you can make 2 robots (two cars each) and the hamster ball...thing with the 5 cars you have. A swarm of hamster balls would be extra cool.

Try going after a microcontroller like the Arduino. Usually there's a separate radio chip that you can reuse. What it does is basically let you send a simple on/off signal. (0 or 1) By using microcontrollers you can predefine ID's for slave devices and run them all on the same frequency. Although this would require you to create your own protocol for the transmission more or less. But if you already have some experience with programming, go for it!