Speaker A
Today, we're building the world's first fully remote control Tesla Cybertruck. This is so sick.
Building the world's first fully remote control Tesla Cybertruck with robotics, coding, and safety hacks in just 3 days.
Ask about this video. Answers come from its transcript only — with the timestamp, so you can check them.
Generated from the transcript and can be wrong — check the timestamp.
Key Takeaways
- Remote control of a complex vehicle like the Cybertruck is possible with clever robotics and hacking.
- Safety is critical; implementing a pneumatic dead man switch ensures the truck stops if control is lost.
- Tesla’s internal sensors, like the breathing radar, can interfere with remote operation and must be bypassed.
- Rapid prototyping and sourcing off-the-shelf parts can enable ambitious projects under tight deadlines.
- Combining hardware hacking with software programming is essential for advanced remote vehicle control.
What the video covers
- The project aims to create a fully remote-controlled Tesla Cybertruck within a tight 3-day deadline.
- The team uses motors on the steering wheel, servos for pedals, and an Arduino for control logic.
- They implement a pneumatic dead man switch for brake safety to stop the truck if control is lost.
- The Cybertruck’s driver detection radar is hacked by unplugging the sensor to allow remote operation.
- Custom brackets and parts are sourced from Amazon and fabricated with welding and laser cutting.
- The gear selector is controlled by servo-driven mechanical fingers pressing buttons.
- The remote control system is tested extensively, including throttle and steering responsiveness.
- A high-end racing simulator is used to drive the Cybertruck remotely for a realistic experience.
- Challenges include tuning stepper motors, overcoming Tesla’s safety features, and power management.
- The project is documented with detailed code and part lists available for enthusiasts.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction and Project Overview
- 01:11Initial Setup and Frame Construction
- 02:08Mounting Components and Steering Wheel Adapter
- 04:50Power Supply and Voltage Management
- 05:55Brake Safety and Pneumatic Dead Man Switch
- 06:50Steering Calibration and Motor Tuning
- 07:50Bypassing Tesla Driver Detection Radar
- 09:03Gear Selector Mechanism and Testing
- 11:22Remote Driving and Safety Testing
- 12:15Using a Racing Simulator to Drive the Cybertruck
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
But it's going to end in disaster. What's going on? What's going on? Oh my gosh.
Speaker A
Luckily, this project is for Whistle and Diesel, so disaster is the goal. This is going to take some clever robotics, unexpected challenges, and we're going to try something crazy.
Speaker A
We're remote driving a Cybertruck. The problem is that we only have 3 days to pull this off. Like, I don't even have time to order parts. We'll have to see what's in stock. Okay, we're gathering parts from all over my
Speaker A
facility. [music] We definitely need this Arduino. [music] We don't have time to hack into the CAN bus and electronically control this thing. It is possible, not easy. So, we're going to have to put some sort of motor on the steering wheel.
Speaker A
We're just going to bolt this puppy on right here. We'll just pull this seat out and build a frame here that'll hold everything, dude.
Speaker A
What is that? What else did you like about that rental? Aura, stop listening to us. That's so creepy.
Speaker A
What's the emergency? No, there's no—No, there is no emergency. What's going on? In 3 days, you're not going to want to be inside this vehicle. I'm just saying.
Speaker A
[music] [music] Got it. Messing with me, huh? What's on your mind? I'm not messing with you.
Speaker A
Totally fine. Fire away with whatever's next. Hey, Aura, can we remove the front seat and you'll still drive or are you going to freak out about it?
Speaker A
I'm here whenever you actually want to chat. I think her ears are plugged up, dude.
Speaker A
[music] All right, let's see if it still drives. Yep. [laughter] Still works. Well, that's good news.
Speaker A
Actually, we should take it for a little drive just to make sure that it doesn't freak out in like 2 minutes or something.
Speaker A
I can't see anything. Navigating by the treetops. That's an aspen. That's a pineapple. Totally good. There was no speed limiter or anything that came on with the driver's seat missing. Let's build a little frame to hold all of our things.
Speaker A
[music] Oh yeah, that's looking nice. We'll just cut out some brackets on the laser and bolt them on.
Speaker A
[music] Airbag. I just need to mount this. Hm. Before I build a custom bracket, let's check Amazon and see if they have one. Tesla Cybertruck steering wheel to custom gearbox adapter flange. Perfect.
Speaker A
Dude, they don't use that tape. I'm so glad I didn't have to make that.
Speaker A
No way. Yeah, we got lucky. Yes, it's all coming together. [music] It's time for some more welding.
Speaker A
I always TIG weld inside of cars because it doesn't spray sparks everywhere. And now to mount the servos.
Speaker A
This one's for the gas pedal. [music] To get power for our system, we need actually four different types of voltage. We need 48 volts for the stepper motor on the steering, 24 volts for the other two servo motors, 12 volts
Speaker A
for the relay bank, 5 volts for the computer logic. We're going to get 48 volts up here, right from the mid-voltage battery. Reckon if I tap on right here, we'll be good to go.
Speaker A
Yep. To get the lower voltages, we'll just put a couple of small transformers in the cab. This is all looking pretty good. I just have one problem with the brake. There's no safety element to it.
Speaker A
So, this is what we're going to do now. We're going to put an air ram on the brake that is always pushing and you release it with the remote control system. That way, if we lose electronic power, it pushes the brake and stops the
Speaker A
truck. I tried using the onboard air from the Cybertruck, but it's not going to work 'cause the tank doesn't stay full all the time. So, we're going to put a compressor in the back seat. There's our air ram.
Speaker A
So now we have a pneumatic dead man switch right here. So you have to be holding this in order to drive the truck. All other times it puts the brake on.
Speaker A
Now that the brake is working, I want to get the steering dialed in. This is always a tricky part because of how fast it has to move and how precise it has to be. So here's where we're at. This is
Speaker A
what I always run into with these stepper motors. They are just kind of terrible in every way.
Speaker A
Like it wants to work. You have to tune them manually in the Arduino code to make them like work at all. Really wish I had time to get a proper servo setup here because it's so much easier to do and they have way more
Speaker A
power and they're way faster. It's actually working. Oh my gosh. I was missing this piece of code. Min pulse width. That made all the difference, bro.
Speaker A
Yeah. This is going to be the funnest RC thing we've ever done. Can we keep this?
Speaker A
I know. So, steering, gas, brake. Okay, it's [laughter] in gear. Make sure you release—Make sure you release the air brakes.
Speaker A
Sh. No. What happened? Something happened. That's not good. Does it know there's no one in there?
Speaker A
It's like it knows no one's in the car. There's some weird Tesla stuff going on here. Never go into park if my foot is down here.
Speaker A
That is so weird. How does it know my foot's there? Take my foot away and it goes into park. It goes into park.
Speaker A
There's a flock camera down there. There's literally mass surveillance on the brake pedal of this truck. Just put a shoe on the shea.
Speaker A
That's not a real foot. Okay. So, there's no foot sensor, but it does not like—When I sit down on that seat back there, that's exactly what's happening. One of these modules is detecting the driver.
Speaker A
The rhythmic motion caused by breathing. The radar in the cab senses your breathing. Incin radar sends out high-frequency radio waves that measure microscopic motion inside the cabin. It can detect the expansion of your chest as you breathe and in some cases even
Speaker A
detect heartbeat-related motion. We have to hack that little box. Think about it. This makes so much sense. This is to make sure you're still alive. That way, if you die while driving the Cybertruck on full self-driving,
Speaker A
dude, it would shut right off. The first stop light you get to, the car puts itself in park. So, anyways, we need to figure out how to hack it.
Speaker A
I don't see any codes. All we had to do is unplug it. We fooled it.
Speaker A
No way. Shut the door. No way. No way. Most expensive RC truck ever created. $140,000.
Speaker A
Dude, this is working. I can't believe it. This is freaking awesome. Wait, reach up and put it in reverse.
Speaker A
Okay, let's try the dead man switch. Yeah, stops it. This is awesome. Now, all we have to do is get the gear selector working.
Speaker A
So, this is essentially just little fingers that are pushing on both buttons. Okay, we should have gears now.
Speaker A
That's a piece of metal on a servo with glove finger ends attached to it and a ground cable for the capacitive sensor to ground to the chassis.
Speaker A
Reverse, drive. You know, it's not a super perfect industrial setup, but like I personally know what Cody's going to do with this truck, and trust me, it's not going to matter.
Speaker A
So now we can watch our gear selector in action. Dude, it works so well.
Speaker A
It works really good. Could this be the most fun thing ever created by humans?
Speaker A
Keep going. Wait. Come back. Trying reverse. Yo, let's go. It's so easy. It's such a good boy.
Speaker A
Good boy. Turn it around. Whoa. Whoa. Most people would be like, "Okay, I'm going to limit the throttle to 4% for initial testing for a week." Dude, it's on beast mode right now. Full throttle.
Speaker A
[laughter] You can't even see if there's a car coming. Test. Hey, you might want to move.
Speaker A
Just go into the store real quick. Wa. Dude, this is sick. If this thing took off full speed right now, we'd be dead, dude. I'd break my neck.
Speaker A
That's why the dead man switch is so important, 'cause if I drop the controller, it'll just stop. We've got this RC system to a really good place, and I know it's going to work for the video.
Speaker A
So, now we have a little extra time to try something cool. This beauty is a high-end racing simulator with a giant motion platform. These racing sims make it feel like you're driving the real thing. The guys over at Podium 1 are
Speaker A
letting me borrow this thing to see if we can drive the Cybertruck with it.
Speaker A
They make and sell some of the coolest racing and flight simulators.
Speaker A
Oh my gosh. I can't wait to see what we can do with this thing.
Speaker A
Thanks to Podium One for gifting me this permanently. He doesn't care. He's okay with it.
Speaker A
These sims normally just play games. So, we're going to have to hack into it pretty good to get it to work with a real truck. This is a flight controller for an RC airplane. So, it has a ton of
Speaker A
instruments in it like a gyroscope that we're going to be using to track the position of the truck.
Speaker A
Okay. Move that thing. You ready? Move it gently man. It's working. Here's our radio. This is what's going to be receiving the signal from that thing.
Speaker A
This will be powered by a battery instead of that cable. Then we'll put that on there. And then this one goes on the computer. This is how we adjust the intensity.
Speaker A
So they Torque wrote a custom script to accept mapling. Yep. Okay. And they did that in like the last 24 hours. So it's pretty cool.
Speaker A
Yeah. Chandler just called up Torque, the company that makes this. He's like, "We got this crazy custom project. We need a special Mav Link adapter software. There's a lot of settings on something like this.
Speaker A
This is our flight controller. All right, we just identified that our wireless link is on COM 9, which is a USB port on COM 9, and we'll see if it works." Okay, dude. I think it's working. Let's unhook this useless USB
Speaker A
cable. That's so sick. This is a pretty complicated build with a lot of parts and I can't put all the details in the YouTube videos. So, if you want to learn more about the nerdy stuff, I'm putting this whole project on
Speaker A
Ark. Ark is a social platform for builders like us to show off our projects and see what other people are working on. I just put this project up with all of its details and it's totally free to check out. I can't overstate how
Speaker A
important it is for everyone to experiment, be creative, and build things with your hands. Ark wants you out in the world making things and sharing it with like-minded people.
Speaker A
That's why they're today's sponsor for this super cool project. Instead of doom scrolling other social media, you can get inspired, show off, and recreate other people's projects with Ark. Let's open up my project and check it out.
Speaker A
This is laid out in steps with pictures and diagrams to make it as easy to understand as possible as we break down the more complicated setups.
Speaker A
And my favorite part is the shopping list with links to buy all the parts.
Speaker A
This would be an expensive project to recreate. Ark is pretty new, so it still has that small community vibe. Download Ark today and get building. All right, we're figuring out where to put the camera now so I can I can see you. And
Speaker A
dude, stop looking at me. I like being able to see through the windshield because I think it's going to give you a lot better aim and perspective if you can see the steering wheel at the same time. Let's build [music] a quick little
Speaker A
mount to hold our FPV camera. [music] We want something pretty solid so it doesn't jostle around when we're hitting big jumps and bumps [music] and we roll it over.
Speaker A
[music] Great. That is dialed. See if she fires up. It's either going to work perfectly or start on fire and explode.
Speaker A
It's working. Let me get a camera guy POV quick. Stop recording me, ma'am. Are you recording me with your FPV cyber truck? [laughter] This little transmitter here takes a lot of power and it makes a lot of heat. So,
Speaker A
we really need to hope that the AC in the truck turn that one on. Oh, it's pretty good. Oo, yes. I think that's going to do it. I think we got it figured out.
Speaker A
Yes. Let's go, dude. How's the speed? Wave your arms around, bro. This is so sick, dude.
Speaker A
Okay, now I just have to get the code for getting the positions out of these sensors.
Speaker A
Okay, it's working. So I'm now getting data from from the computer over serial into the radio transmitter.
Speaker A
[music] This part is a little tricky, but I'm learning a lot more about programming through projects like this. [music] I had to write some code that tracks down and filters the data from the sensors on the steering wheel.
Speaker A
[music] and it works really good. I just got everything turned on for the first time.
Speaker A
This system is actually really complicated. We have like five different programs running. It's like decoding everything out of the simulator here. These are all of our raw values.
Speaker A
And it is it is working. Look at this. No way, dude. [laughter] Dude, it's working.
Speaker A
It's so cool. [screaming] This is going to be our first full system check. Everything working. Picking up the steering.
Speaker A
Ooh, steering wheel's working. No way. The camera's frozen. Oh no, it is frozen. Why is it still laggy?
Speaker A
Why am I still over there? No, we lost it again. But if we don't have FPV, we can't do it. What's going on? The system is normally like so dialed in. Let me see the goggles. I'm just going to wear them.
Speaker A
We're officially driving a Cyber Truck with a racing simulator. Wait, dude. This is sick.
Speaker A
Wait, the gyro is working. There are no eyes on the truck right now. We're doing it. You're remote driving a Cyber Truck.
Speaker A
Oh, there she goes. Dude, dude. Dude, this is nuts. Dude, the gyro works so good, though.
Speaker A
It actually is working amazing. Oh my gosh. Here it comes. Here it comes. Yo, this is the ultimate gaming setup.
Speaker A
The ultimate highstakes gaming setup. All right, I'm pulling it in. I'm pulling it in.
Speaker A
Okay, go easy. Go easy. Here she is. [laughter] Okay, we got some more practice to do.
Speaker A
This is awesome, dude. I want to keep this, dude. All right, let's take it to Cody so we can frolic a little more.
Speaker A
This is so fun. [music] Hope it doesn't uh go ary on us. I hope so too. Is that a concern at all?
Speaker A
Yes. Got it. Yes. Right into the Corvette. Hey, this can kill us right now. Oh my god.
Speaker A
This is amazing. This is actually amazing. No actual way. Jeez, dude. This is so sick.
Speaker A
Just taking my car for a walk. This is totally working. Dude, is this Are you using goggles?
Speaker A
I can see everything. It's There's no latency at all. Dude, it ripped. Go easy.
Speaker A
This is the coolest thing ever. It's right behind me, isn't it? It's right there.
Speaker A
All right, Finn. Let's hop in. I did not sign the waiver. Yeah, you did.
Speaker A
We are in the belly of the beast. So we can watch it in action.
Speaker A
[laughter] All this work just to make it right-hand drive. Yeah. I'm super happy with how the remote control system with the FPV goggles is working. There's like no latency. It's really easy to drive. For what Cody's going to be doing with this, I don't
Speaker A
know if we're going to use the motion platform yet, but I definitely want to do a video where we do something with that. The biggest problem we have is the DJI setup doesn't stream HDMI out of these goggles. So, there's no low
Speaker A
latency way to show it on the screen. You can drive the simulator with the goggles on, but it kind of defeats the purpose. But, this was a great proof of concept that I know is going to work on
Speaker A
another build. We have to do one soon. Let's do a little sightseeing. Let's go for a cruise, man.
Speaker A
Whoa. Yeah, this is kind of sketchy. Whoa. We're sliding. You got it. He actually doesn't.
Speaker A
Dude, any 10-year-old male would kill to have this on Christmas. I would kill it on Christmas.
Speaker A
All the testing today has gone really well. So, this thing is totally ready to go to the racetrack tomorrow for the whistle and diesel video.
Speaker A
I'm about to hand the controller to Cody. So, I'm saying my goodbyes cuz it's probably not going to last 4 minutes. Goodbye.
Speaker A
Am I good to back up? Yeah, you're good. No problem. How's it feel handing the keys over?
Speaker A
I feel like I just gave an chimpanzee an AK-47. Everyone here is in grave danger. Uh oh.
Speaker A
I feel like it's going to come right at us. Oh my god. Bro, this is great. I can do that.
Speaker A
Bro, let me get the hang of it. Yeah, let me get the hang of it before we try.
Speaker A
No, this is amazing. How far will I go? The radio will never fail. The goggles will start to turn yellow and then red before it shuts off.
Speaker A
Okay, so maybe I can get to the grass at the end. Yeah, you should be able to. Okay.
Speaker A
Easily it is so far away. Yeah, I can see it just like it's right here.
Speaker A
Oh, I mean this is good. This is pretty Oh wow. Okay. All right. Full throttle.
Speaker A
Whoa. That's gear. Keep going. Okay. I'm getting the hang of it. Go right, Cody. I'm getting a good turn.
Speaker A
I'm a good driver, dude. Here we go. Goodbye, Cyber Truck. Oh my gosh. It's good.
Speaker A
It's going. It's good. IT'S GOOD. LOCK ON. LOCK ON. What's going on? WHAT'S GOING OH MY GOSH.
Speaker A
What's going on? It exploded. Indios. Come on. Holy crap. That was insane. Instant explosion.
Speaker A
I did not expect that. I hope the Oh no. Is that the Alex is on the back, by the way.
Speaker A
It's a cyber No, the F150 is fuel tank. Is the cyber truck on fire?
Speaker A
I think so. Yeah. Oh, no. The battery. Are we like to get close to the battery?
Speaker A
Yeah. The one more. Okay. It was so broke. I locked on when I saw it. I was like I was like it was like a missile locking on. I was like get it out.
Speaker A
Cybert truck's not on fire. It's just the F-150. It's starting to go. Oh, he's got it.
Speaker A
Okay, we're good. Got it. Cybertruck is on fire though. Still got the baby. We're We're good, dude.
Speaker A
So, that's the first responder plug. Now, the battery will be totally And then uh get that one, too.
Speaker A
Yeah, it should be pretty pretty well disabled now. Up to like 2 days after a bad collision like this, you can have thermal runaway on this battery. It'll start to smoke and just get really hot and then explode. I think it looks fine.
Speaker A
Yeah, we got lucky. If you were in this truck, you would have survived. I really strapped in. You wouldn't have gotten crushed or anything.
Speaker A
Dude, I can't believe these cyber trucks are so safe. So safe. 111 mph. T-Bone another truck.
Speaker A
Slid it 100 y. Way better than I thought it would be. Oh my god, it was amazing.
Speaker A
[music]
Topics:Tesla Cybertruckremote controlroboticsArduinostepper motorservo motordead man switchvehicle hackingracing simulatorDIY project
