Tech Race Car

Tech Race is a team project at HETIC school. The goal is to build a mobile app to remotely control a vehicle over a wireless network: real-time driving, video capture, telemetry display (speed, orientation), and races—including a mode where the vehicle autonomously follows a line on the ground.

The project spans several repositories (backend API, mobile app, vehicle firmware, 3D model). As a team, I contributed to the Golang backend, the React Native frontend, vehicle programming, and deployed the API for a jury demo: C++ firmware on an ESP32 microcontroller for driving, sensors, and communication with the app.

On the vehicle side, the firmware (open source, built with PlatformIO) connects the ESP32 to an existing WiFi network. Once connected, it receives commands over WebSocket and sends telemetry to the broker via MQTT. Commands are JSON objects with a type id (cmd) and associated data, enabling control of wheels, LEDs, buzzer, video stream, etc. without spelling out every command in the protocol. Network settings (WiFi, vehicle IP, gateway, netmask) and the WebSocket endpoint are centralized in code to make it easier to adapt to another environment.

The learning goal was to adapt to new technologies by integrating a physical device—pushing us to be flexible because our skills are usually web-focused. The project highlighted software–hardware integration (MQTT, real-time, telemetry). Teamwork on a multi-repo architecture was also valuable.