Solenoids in RC control car

Thanks both. Anyway, the project has changed slightly. Had about 20 minutes with it on Telnet just issuing commands in the console and it appears the steering servo is broke. I'm assuming it has stripped a gear, since it no longer makes either stop, the motor just spins. I've opened it up and everything is so tiny it is hard to see what might be damaged but there's no final drive on the arm. It was only a few quid on ebay, but reluctant to get another if it is not up to the job.

Kids however now sufficiently interested, to give me (actually sell me) another RC car - this one is much bigger and runs a motor for steering also, so both channels of the Hbridge board will be useful. It also has 4 * AA batteries so I'll have 6v to put into the NodeMCU, which I'm, hoping will be ok - and of course the body will go back on.

The camera idea is cool, I did see this being something that could be driven over the internet - and I fancied MQTT over port forwarding to a webserver running on the ESP8266 - and the camera would be a boon.

The custom PCB is also a great idea, but it all comes down to learning curves and time for me.