My Projects

Cone icon by Fornax, CC-BY-SA 3.0, wikimedia commons 1)

Published 2 May 2019

Thunder Tumbler


Thunder Tumbler overview
A mostly intact, Thunder Tumbler
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Remote topside Remote underside

Overview

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.

Disassembled Remote topside

Hardware description

There are two rear drive wheels with independent DC motors and fixed ratio gear boxes.

Disassembled closeup Motors

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).

Axle

Everything is powered by a six volt battery.

The electronics is a single board (WB-1407R) containing an RX-2B remote control receiver chip, aerial circuitry, and a bridge of eight transistors (4x HY33 A1300, 4x AE9T) to drive the motors. There is also a fuse on the power line.

PCB top PCB bottom

The remote control is powered by a nine volt battery, and has an on/off switch, left & right motor forward/backward switches, and a turbo pushbutton switch.

Remote with cover off

All the electronics are on one small board which has the switches mounted directly on it. There is one 27.145MHz crystal, one power-on LED, and a TX-2B remote controller transmitter IC.

Remote PCB

References and Additional Resources

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1) PAGE UNDER CONSTRUCTION