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I built a system to drive my RC car from anywhere in the world

Details

External ID
46681486
Source
HN
Company
—
Product
I built a system to drive my RC car from anywhere in the world
Website domain
github.com
Launched
Jan. 19, 2026
Cohort
—
Upvotes
6
Upvotes percentile
0.2549407114624506
Tags
—
Fetched at
Sept. 7, 2026, 9:25 p.m.
Updated at
Sept. 7, 2026, 9:25 p.m.

Description

Wanted to share a project I've been working on. Basically lets you drive an RC car remotely over the internet with live FPV video. I'm arranging outdoor time attack tournaments with friends, somewhere in woods or in the open field.The setup: - Raspberry Pi Zero 2W mounted on the car with a wide-angle camera - ESP32 on the transmitter generating joystick voltages (needed because ARRMA's 2-in-1 ESC/receiver has no accessible inputs) - Cloudflare for the networking magic (TURN, Tunnel, Workers) - Browser-based controls - works on phone or desktop What it does: - ~100-200ms control latency over internet (10-15ms on LAN) - 720p @ 30fps live video - Touch controls on mobile, keyboard on desktop - Admin dashboard for race management - Token-based access so I can let friends drive - Auto-stops if connection drops (safety first) - Adjustable throttle limits - Optional re-streaming to YouTube Built it because I thought it'd be cool to let people drive the car without being physically present. Currently running it on my 4G modem and it works surprisingly well.The whole thing is open source if anyone wants to check it out or build their own. The thing is, it's obviously not easy to get up and running for an average user. But maybe you'll find this useful.Total hardware cost is around $75 (Pi + camera + ESP32) assuming you already have the car and transmitter.Some features are work in progress: - Speedometer - GPS and track position - Gates system (will probably use short-range Bluetooth beacons) Here's a a technical article about the project that reveals a bit more of under the hood thinking https://romanliutikov.com/blog/building-internet-controlled-...

Enrichment

Theme
interactive simulations and creative experiments
Vertical
—
Function
Hardware & robotics
Audience
Prosumer
AI stance
Not AI
Project type
Hobby / open-source project
Normalized one-liner
remote control system for rc cars
Manually corrected
False

Could you build this?

No This project integrates custom physical hardware, motor/servo control electronics via GPIO, and real-time low-latency ultra-reliable video and control streaming over cellular networks across the open internet.

What it would actually take: Building this requires physical assembly of hardware, power distribution, and motor drivers wired to a Raspberry Pi Zero with a camera module. The software stack requires an ultra-low latency WebRTC streaming pipeline (using GStreamer or WebRTC data channels) traversing NATs via STUN/TURN servers to maintain milliseconds-level latency over variable 4G/LTE mobile connections. Expertise in embedded systems, electronics, hardware interfacing (PWM control for servos/ESCs), and real-time networking is necessary.

Discussion

2 comments analyzed.

Competitors mentioned: servo-controlled Traxxas buggy with LTE hat

Concerns raised: latency over internet, camera/lens performance in varying lighting conditions

Competitors

Other products that read as similar to this one — 91 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.

Attention rank: #75 of 92 (itself plus its competitors, highest first — normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).

Launched 77 days after the earliest competitor.

Other launches for this product