Thanks guys. Well immersed into the subject now.
I am at present designing the 'rowing mechanism'. I have all sorts of systems on file and plan to make it as realistic as possible. Several versions have been tried and rejected as there's more to this than meets the eye.
It has to be a parallelogram action with rounded corners and slightly slopping sides, with enough force to shift 60 wooden blades in the desired way, forward and backward. When that's done, we have to make two sets (one for each side) which can be run independently or together as the need arises. I'm certainly getting through the Whisky bottle.
Cheers
ken
Hi Ken, you may have already considered this.
Beyond the basics but this may make life easier.
If you can find someone who can program an Arduino for you, and you use stepper motors.
For each row/side of oars.
Position 1: Oars out of the water top of stroke. For coasting (turning if opposite side in)
Position 2: Oars in the water bottom of stroke. Braking (handbrake turns if opposite side out)
Position 3: Row forward, normal speed
Position 4: Row forward, slow
Position 5: Row backward, slow. (playing with 4 and 5 allows turning the boat in its own length)
Position 6: Sync port and starboard in position 1. Start position and fail-safe.
Just thinking out of the box. But having some way to put the oars back into some 'start position' would be useful I think.