A few years back (2015 - ok, more than a few) I built a pair of RC tanks to demonstrate the use of ardunino communication libraries. While it was for our local code camp, the hardware build was the most challenging bit with the highest learning curve.
The "tanks" had shields for front, rear, and each side that took damage separately. A main cannon with switchable weapons did different amounts of damage based on how much energy the weapon used.
Different weapons had different types of simulated kick-back ... the rapid fire machine-gun type weapon had a rapid shaking kick back while the mega-super-weapon was a super whomp kick-back. I don't recall if I got around to implementing physical effects when your tank was hit.
Control was using hacked up thrift store-sourced PC joysticks. (and by hacked-up, I do mean hacked-up. Soldered directly to potentiometers and spliced into a controlling arduino that tracked tank status etc)
All controllers and tanks were mesh-networked using cheap 2.4ghz nrf24L01+ wireless (but not wifi) chips. My idealistic final vision was massive multi-player games with selectable features.
- large games with selectable friendly fire
- different damage consequences
- scrambling opponents weapons or drive systems, drive systems degrading as they took fire, flakey shields
- communicating with a central computer for viewing game progress and tracking stats
- vastly improved system information displays (vs the cheap LCDs)
- fpv camera with a HUD woulda been sooo cool.
I knew it was going to be a huge learning curve - I was familiar with basic arduino functionality but hadn't done much beyond basic sensor reading and light blinking. I had to learn how to integrate a LOT of hardware and deal with real world complications. (sunlight plays merry havoc when using IR as your weapon-shooting and shield-receiving) I started 3-4 months before the presentation date and (of course) was still swapping out hardware and tweaking software the night before.
The "tanks" had shields for front, rear, and each side that took damage separately. A main cannon with switchable weapons did different amounts of damage based on how much energy the weapon used.
Different weapons had different types of simulated kick-back ... the rapid fire machine-gun type weapon had a rapid shaking kick back while the mega-super-weapon was a super whomp kick-back. I don't recall if I got around to implementing physical effects when your tank was hit.
Control was using hacked up thrift store-sourced PC joysticks. (and by hacked-up, I do mean hacked-up. Soldered directly to potentiometers and spliced into a controlling arduino that tracked tank status etc)
All controllers and tanks were mesh-networked using cheap 2.4ghz nrf24L01+ wireless (but not wifi) chips. My idealistic final vision was massive multi-player games with selectable features.
- large games with selectable friendly fire
- different damage consequences
- scrambling opponents weapons or drive systems, drive systems degrading as they took fire, flakey shields
- communicating with a central computer for viewing game progress and tracking stats
- vastly improved system information displays (vs the cheap LCDs)
- fpv camera with a HUD woulda been sooo cool.
I knew it was going to be a huge learning curve - I was familiar with basic arduino functionality but hadn't done much beyond basic sensor reading and light blinking. I had to learn how to integrate a LOT of hardware and deal with real world complications. (sunlight plays merry havoc when using IR as your weapon-shooting and shield-receiving) I started 3-4 months before the presentation date and (of course) was still swapping out hardware and tweaking software the night before.
"trailer": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7uAQrak1iA&ab_channel=Aaron...
presentation notes: https://github.com/adbacker/duinobattletanks/blob/master/doc...
code: https://github.com/adbacker/duinobattletanks/tree/master