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Tracking a toy car in a game

rjdieper

Nov 10, 2015
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I am thinking of working on project with my teenage son and some of his friends. The want to put something in a toy car and then write an android (and maybe eventually iphone) app that tracks on the screen where the toy car is being driven. We are wondering what device/technology should we put in the toy car (rfid, bluetooth, wifi or ?). The toy car is about twice as big as a hotwheel car so we don't quite have room for a full size arduino, but maybe something like a trinket? Or if we go the rfid route, would that give us enough accuracy? Or do you have any other ideas?
Thanks
 

Harald Kapp

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Nov 17, 2011
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Whatever kind of sender you use, you will need 2 receivers at different locations to triangulatethe position of the car. Unless you put a GPS receiver into the car plus a transmitter that sends the decoded position to the smartphone or tablet. But I think that would be prohibitively big.

A small solution could be made from an IR LED in the car and directionally sensitive IR receicers e.g. in two neighbouting corners of the room. This info may help you along your way.
 

rjdieper

Nov 10, 2015
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Nov 10, 2015
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Whatever kind of sender you use, you will need 2 receivers at different locations to triangulatethe position of the car. Unless you put a GPS receiver into the car plus a transmitter that sends the decoded position to the smartphone or tablet. But I think that would be prohibitively big.

A small solution could be made from an IR LED in the car and directionally sensitive IR receicers e.g. in two neighbouting corners of the room. This info may help you along your way.

Thanks for the reply the link to the "infrared tracking system" that the cornell students put together might be what we model it after, but I am still temped to go the gps route pairing up a small arduino with a gps like http://www.adafruit.com/product/746 - I might run out of room, but it seem kind of cool to not have to have the 2 towers.

Thanks again!
 

BobK

Jan 5, 2010
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A GPS only gives you accuracy of about 10m. This is huge to a toy car, probably larger than the area they are running around in.

An overhead camera might be a better idea. If you control the background, and make each car a different color, the processing to determine where the cars are could be quite reasonable.

Bob
 
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