Radio Controlled Cars

Radio Controlled Car Article Snippets:

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Radio Controlled Car Questions & Answers:

What can cause a 27 MHZ radio control car to randomly move by itself?
The other day, after it drove forward a few ft for no apparent reason, briefly stopped, & then drove a few more ft, I assumed that the trigger was somehow malfunctioning & removed the battery (this was easier than removing the car’s batteries).
Despite doing this, throughout the remainder of the day & late into the night it would randomly drive in different ways — from several ft forwards or backwards to just lurching forward a few inches at a time &, later still, it began repeatedly (um, VIOLENTLY) driving back & forth rather fast.
I cannot find a “common denominator.” Neighbors live well beyond signal range & I’ve literally turned off all electronics & taken batteries out of everything & it still moves (I know I must sound NuTs BUT at least I haven’t resorted to shutting the house’s power off… yet). My logical side is beginning to weaken as I watch this thing navigate intelligently, as though someone is controlling it (backing itself out if it gets stuck under furniture, for example). It also coincidentally moves the second I finish telling someone about it & it only seems to move in front of adults — never around my 3yr old son.
Embarrassingly, this isn’t the 1st time something like this has happened. We have a stuffed animal that occasionally wakes us up at night, its lights flashing & its music playing without anyone squeezing its paws. We assure one another that it must be some random glitch but anyhoo… DOES ANYONE HAVE A SIMPLE “SCIENTIFIC” EXPLANATION?

The car is picking up random signals. Its happened to me on a few occasions years ago.
What metric are you using to say that your neighbors are out of range? The car is reacting thus its antenna is picking something up. Its a passive device and is not limited to a range on its own.
Interferences can come from anywhere. It could be down the block, miles away, or heck the sun, even.

It could well be that the biasing of the amplifiers or filter design on your car are such that make it more sensitive than typical. Or the random inference has more energy at your location than others. I believe CB radios can use that frequency also. So you just may have a radio (vocal, thus very random) signal being picked up on the RC car.

You think that is weird. I had my unplugged stereo and speakers talk to me in bursts at a respectable volume before. That scared the **** out of me. but I quickly recognized that it was just trucker chit chat …. I lived at the time about 1/3 mile from the high way.

Short of creating your own digital encoding/decoding algorithms and circuits and Frankensteining that car. It will happen. Just power down the car by flipping a good old fashion switch on it or remove the battery.