Any way to improve distance of toy remote control car?

[Sparkey55]

Re: Any way to improve distance of toy remote control car?

Well, then need to know what's expected behavior for this device, should it really be conking out at 10ft?

Not sure if bandages like antenna hacks or preamplifiers should be done to fix an underlying problem like battery weakness or improper tuning.

I do not know. Could just be designed that way or may need fresh batteries. Most of these really cheap toys (<$20) skimp on parts needed to "tune" for optimum performance to save a few cents on the Dollar. Cheap 27Mhz or 49Mhz crystals that drift like Trump in a porn cenvention. Maybe a 60Khz to 100Khz or more bandwidth on the carrier. This is not competition grade race cars here.

[stj]

Re: Any way to improve distance of toy remote control car?

try a foot-long bit of spring-steel wire on the car.
it's what they used to come with.

[Sparkey55]

Re: Any way to improve distance of toy remote control car?

try a foot-long bit of spring-steel wire on the car.
it's what they used to come with.

Read the thread completely, I have posted that solution above.

[caphair]

Re: Any way to improve distance of toy remote control car?

Finally had some time to take this thing apart and check out the antenna. It's just a square piece of paper with a shiny side that's connected to the antenna wire. Other side is non reflective and glued to the plastic.

Could I just replace it with a coiled piece of wire?

[stj]

Re: Any way to improve distance of toy remote control car?

replace it with a vertical wip, your trying to catch waves, not just match the frequency.

[momaka]

Re: Any way to improve distance of toy remote control car?

Finally had some time to take this thing apart and check out the antenna. It’s just a square piece of paper with a shiny side that’s connected to the antenna wire. Other side is non reflective and glued to the plastic.

Could I just replace it with a coiled piece of wire?

Wow, I've never seen an antenna like that in a cheap RC before, and I used to have (and play) with quite a few when I was a little younger. Most of my *toy* RCs are from the late 90's / early 2000's, and they all come with typically a 15-30 cm (0.5 to 1 foot) straight antenna (sometimes just wire in a straw). Many of these RCs got about 10 meters / 10 yards of range or a little more in my town neighborhood. This was back before WiFi and Blutooth had become popular, though. So I'm not sure if that has changed anything nowadays.

That said, I do have one old Tyco RC (called "Jacknife", IIRC) that had an integrated antenna, which basically consisted of a long wire ran along the whole body of the car in a loop. Some years later, I was repairing one for a friend's kid, and that RC had a metal circular loop antenna inside - about 6-8 cm (2.5-3 inches) in diameter. I don't remember what kind of range that one got, but it wasn't bad IIRC.

Anyways, you can try replacing that current "antenna" piece with something else. I'd sat a long piece of wire would do just fine for testing. But if that doesn't appear to do anything, it could be indeed like Sparkey55 mentioned: just bad design. And of course, fresh batteries are absolutely a must with these.

One more sidenote: going by the pictures you posted, your receiver board looks very familiar to one of these on eBay:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/4CH-40MHZ-R.../202425771105?
These are much newer than the ones I have in my late 90's / early 2000's RCs (none of them have SMD components). So I just cannot attest to how good or bad these are. But I can tell you that my older toy stuff with longer antennas didn't perform too bad... save for some of them frying a few BJTs on the motor outputs (at least the ones that came with all TO-92 stuff).

*EDIT*
Talking about toys... I just hit post # 8448. That's the dream LEGO Technic car of my childhood. Ironic coincidence?

[llonen]

Re: Any way to improve distance of toy remote control car?

I used to get upto 40 meters on similar rc stuff in the past outside mind you, so look at the transmitter crystal then check with a frequency counter and look at the amplitude with a scope see whats coming out.

[eccerr0r]

Re: Any way to improve distance of toy remote control car?

Are you sure that's an antenna, looks like a grounded shield for the PCB? What's it look like on the other side of the PCB?