After searching everywhere for an affordable ride-on fire truck toy for his daughter this past Christmas season YouTuber Jason Altice (AKA CodeMakesItGo) had nearly given up, but luckily enough was able to locate a free Grave Digger Power Wheels that he could modify into one. In its current condition, the vehicle was in bad shape so it had to first be almost completely disassembled, which led to the discovery of a bad switch that was causing the troubles. 

Upon removing each panel and meticulously painting it with coats of primer and bright red paint, Altice moved onto the next step of including a loud siren and some lights for additional realism. He took an Arduino Nano, loaded some sounds in the form of tone melodies, and then ran the outputted signal from the digital pin to an amplifier and onwards to the horn.

The last piece of this fire truck puzzle was figuring out how to integrate the emergency lights and make them flash in a realistic manner. Altice was able to find a string of LEDs that already had an integrated receiver, so he decoded the signal coming from the 433MHz transmitter and set the Arduino to replay it whenever the activation button on the dashboard is pressed. 

The final result of all this work was a really cool, drivable vehicle that Altice’s daughter could use. More details on the project can be found here on Instructables.