Tesla Cybertrack is resting: a father has created the most technologically advanced children’s car for his daughter

Perhaps Tesla should take a closer look at this man. With the help of a Raspberry Pi, John Scagmo has turned a back-and-forth children’s electric car into the most technologically advanced car in its class.

John bought a children’s electric car with a «dead» battery and gave it a new life. He equipped the car with a Raspberry Pi and a touch screen, a music system, better steering, working lights, and more.

Initially, Skagmo wanted to build a car for his daughter from scratch. However, he focused his energy on what he loved: electronics. It was a very simple car that could move forward and backward.The enthusiast turned it into something much closer to modern cars. He created a dashboard with function buttons and switches, a selfie camera, a touchscreen display, and a speaker.

All of this runs on a Raspberry Pi 3 with a special GPS/GNSS daughterboard. The father uses it to track where the car is going — the settings are transmitted via Wi-Fi to the Home Assistant server.

The sound system has an amplifier connected to a small subwoofer under the seat and a speaker in the dashboard. The gas pedal is proportional — the more the child presses it, the faster the car goes.

The dashboard is a panel based on the 3U form factor. The sides are made of plywood, and the panel itself is made of 2.5 mm aluminum sheet. The dashboard has a wide-angle selfie camera, which is designed primarily for «recording funny videos, but is also useful for two-way video communication with the driver».

The panel contains a 4″ 480×800 touchscreen that displays music playback and battery power remaining and the percentage of the accelerator pedal pressed. There is also a moving map. All of this was done using the PyQT GUI program that Skagmo wrote for the Raspberry Pi.

The array of physical buttons with LED indicators is connected via I2C to the MCP23018 microcontroller. There are buttons for switching between forward and reverse, turning on the headlights, siren, and controlling the music player. There is even a button to control the garage door.

John Scagmo found LED lights «angel eye» that fit perfectly into the well for the sticker headlights. They are also connected to the dashboard and can be turned on and off with a button. In general, the project is very thorough, and any child would be happy with such a functional car.