While most people spent their holiday playing with toys, Irish maker Conor O'Neill was busy daisy-chaining a Raspberry Pi, MaKey MaKey invention kit, and slices of cheese — yes, cheese — to create a uniquely controlled RC car. The project began with O'Neill, an engineer by training, looking for a Christmas gift for his children, ages six and seven. It had to be interesting enough that it wouldn't be tossed aside before the new year and cheap enough to stay off his credit card balance in 2013. He came across the "i-Racer" a £19.99 (about $32.50) RC car with a Bluetooth radio, rack-and-pinion steering and a rechargeable battery. The car is supposed to be controlled with an Android phone, but O'Neill figured that with a little MaKey MaKey hacking it could be steered with something more unique. The MaKey MaKey breakout board allows everything from bananas to pails of water to become inputs for a computing device. Paired with a $2 Bluetooth dongle and Raspberry Pi board, the toy race car could potentially be controlled with anything in a pantry. O'Neill took on the grating task of connecting and debugging the various components, sharing his recipe in a very detailed blog post. "Whilst these steps are quite short and the code is very simple, it took a week of evenings cursing, hacking and googling to get everything working right," he writes. In the end, the car worked like butter, shredded on the hardwood floor and looked sharp at the same time. After trying cheese, grapes and a Barbie doll as control mechanisms, the O'Neills are now looking to hack the Nintendo WiiMote to control their car. "We have tons of them in the house and they are all big Wii fans," says O'Neill. But he also adds that their food adventures aren't over. "On the MaKey MaKey front we want to try more foods. The original plan was to use Christmas mince pies, but their big brother ate them all." While this project might seem like a cross between a Rube Goldberg contraption and a Wallace and Gromit invention, the project incorporates professional-grade applications. "The whole idea of 'tinkering' is incredibly important," says O'Neill. "The code I posted last night for controlling the i-racer is multi-threaded. That's the first time I have ever done multi-threaded code in Python. Last year I learned the basics of Node.js whilst scratching a similar itch on a Twitter project. Whilst I'm not a full-time programmer (I used to be), I manage programmers and make all the major technical decisions in our company. These little side projects can be a fun and effective way for me to check out interesting technologies for potential use in the company. One of our internal tools is now built in Node for that very reason." Photo: Conor O'Neill

Like strong cheeses, geeky hacks can be an acquired taste. O'Neill's son Fionn (age 7) showed the video to a friend who called it "weird." The good news? O'Neill says "Both Fionn and his little sister Síofra (age 6) strongly disagreed with him." Photo: Conor O'Neill

The MaKey MaKey's configuration follows the game control standard set by Nintendo, making it a natural interface for kid-friendly projects like this. Presented with a familiar interface, it becomes easier for kids to imagine new possibilities. Photo: MaKey MaKey

The MaKey MaKey food-driven commands are routed via USB into the Raspberry Pi board, which processes the information and transmits it to the car wirelessly through an attached Bluetooth dongle. Photo: Screenshot

The i-Racer, before modifications by the O'Neill clan. Photo: Cool Components

The open-ended nature of the MaKey MaKey means that the grapes and cheese can be easily replaced with a tinfoil-covered Barbie doll. O'Neill says that future project ideas include hacking an electronic drum set so each beat moves the car along. Photo: Conor O'Neill

Next up on O'Neill's to-do list is an improved body design. He's considering some combination of Lego, Kinex, and Sugru, a versatile modeling putty invented by a fellow Irish maker. Also, Sugru has developed a great tutorial for modding Legos. Photo: Sugru

O'Neill would like to see a well-designed car template for an app like Foldify that would allow kids to make their own custom skins for modded RC cars out of cardstock. Foldify is a new iPad application that lets users easily design a variety of 3-D objects, then print out them out as paper templates that can be cut and folded together to create the finished item. Read our coverage of Foldify's app to learn more about the app's potential. Image: Foldify