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Racers, start your tiny, electric engines: a new DIY RC car has arrived.

Designer Matt Sroufe’s build is powered by an ESP32-CAM microcontroller, which comes equipped camera module. Once fully assembled and hooked up to an RC car chassis, you’ll be able to livestream video to a Python-based server along with what appears to be up to four other cars.

The chassis and board Sroufe recommends are available on AliExpress – the latter for just 99 cents. All told, the required parts should cost significantly less than $100, not counting the Bluetooth-enabled gaming controller you’ll need to drive the car.

Hardware assembly looks straightforward enough: we’d call it a moderate difficulty, with the need for a bit of wiring, and perhaps a bit of extra tinkering should power and connectivity issues arise.

The same goes for the software side of things, complexity-wise, although it may lean a bit more toward the advanced end of the spectrum, as you’ll need some experience with ESP32 and Arduino programming.

Both CNX Software and Hackster have interesting write-ups on the car – although to create one for yourself, you’ll need to head to the GitHub page dedicated to Sroufe’s build.

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License: The text of "This Sub-$100 DIY RC Car Can Livestream Races to a Python Server" by All3DP is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.