Building a Raspberry Pi-Powered, Nerf-Firing LEGO RC Car to Get Through Quarantine

There is nothing wrong with admitting that quarantine is hard — even if you aren’t sick. Nobody enjoys social isolation or being stuck at home indefinitely. There are only so many Netflix shows you can binge watch before the boredom really sets in and you start craving some mental stimulation. As makers, the best way to get that mental stimulation is by building something. That’s why Redditor Stiw47 made this LEGO RC car based a Raspberry Pi that can be steered by a PlayStation controller and shoots Nerf darts.

It may look a tad cobbled-together, but this project was actually a pretty substantial undertaking and packs a lot of features. That makes it the perfect quarantine project. It can be driven around with a Sony PlayStation Dual Shock 4 controller, and can fire Nerf darts that are fed from a magazine. The Nerf system is mounted on a turret, so it can be aimed at targets. However, that turret only rotates and doesn’t tilt up and down, so targets need to be at roughly knee height. The firing mechanism for the darts came from a disassembled Nerf gun.

Each of the four wheels is spun by its own DC motor, and those are controlled by a Raspberry Pi through an Arduino Motor Shield that has L298N motor drivers. The turret is rotated by a small stepper motor. The Dual Shock 4 connects to the Raspberry Pi via Bluetooth. A micro:bit board is also used to indicate which direction the car is moving in. The chassis of the car is mostly made up of LEGO Technic components. In the future, Stiw47 plans to 3D print some parts to replace the cardboard turret enclosure, and may even add a video camera feed.