This would be the radio stuff. Fortunately, this was relatively cheap at
$150 dollars. The big jobby with the wheel and trigger is the transmitter, which
you use to crash your expensive toy after you've built it.
The part with the green thing (a fuse) is the speed controller. Electric motors
only have two speeds. Off, and as fast as it can spin. While it is easy to
crash a car going at top speed, sometimes you need to go slower. For example,
when you're executing a turn, so that you can crash into something more solid.
So, the speed controller basically pulses power to the motor thousands of times
a second, to control how fast it can go. This generates heat, as well as the
propulsive force requires to crash the car.
There is also a servo, which is hard to see, but it's next to the transmitter
and below the plastic bag. This is basically a very small hi torque motor that
controlls the steering. Unlike the lame R/C toys that you can buy at radio
shack, the servo can spin in small increments, giving you proportionate
steering. This doesn't sound all that cool, until you actually drive the
car and realize you can make slight course corrections (good for aiming at
small targets you want to crash into) without veering off to the sides.
Lastly, the thing with the yellow tag poking out of it is the receiver. This
of course, sits in the car, and receives instructions from the transmitter in
your hand, that tells the speed controller to control speed, or the servo which
way to spin so that you can crash into stuff.
As an added bonus for paying perfectly good money for this, you get a little
baggie full of flags and ribbons you can hang all over yourself to let others
know what frequency you're crashing your car on, so that you don't conflict
with theirs. Remember, only the person that shelled out the car should get
the chance to crash it. That's just common courtesy.
