This is an old revision of the document!
Published 2 May 2019
Thunder Tumbler
A cheap remote control toy (marketed under the name of “Blue Hat Toy Company”), which has possibilities as the basis for a remote controlled robot.
There are two rear drive wheels with independant DC motors and fixed ratio gear boxes.
There are coloured LEDs mounted in the rear wheels to light them up, and they are powered via slip connections on the drive shaft so that they can rotate with the wheels. The drive shafts have hex shaped ends that plug into the drive wheels (secured by a screw through the end of the hub).
Everything is powered by a six volt battery.
The electronics is a single board containing an RX-2B remote control receiver chip, aerial circuitry, crystal timebase, and a bridge of eight transistors to drive the motors. There is also a fuse on the power line.