I am a volunteer head coach for a youth rowing program. High school age kids. I get them out on the water and work their butts off. I make them sweat their tears out.
I am a retired Mechanical Engineer. I learned how to program in hex code on an Intel 8088. Tells you how old I am In the mid 80’s, I designed a microcontroller board from the chips up and wrote the code to run a machine I designed. They didn’t have all this stuff back then.
I have had three female rowers develop hip related issues.
I have been working with a head strength coach for university football team and a physical therapist to understand the biomechanics of what is going on. I want to improve safety for young rowers.
To be able to understand this, I need to be able to measure force using multiple load cells through a rowing stroke out on the water and not on a stationary exercise rowing machine. Not the same. The mechanical design on how to do this I have.
I have been studying on SparkFun and working to learn. I think I have most of it figured out. Open Scale, Open Log Artemis, etc. I am ready to jump in and try.
However, I know there will be points of time as I am trying to work through this I am going to get stuck and need help.
I have multiple rowers that are in STEM programs. Bunch of smart kids. We are going to do this together as a project and a learning opportunity.
If there is someone out there that has knowledge in this area that I can ask the dumb questions too for help, it would be greatly appreciated.
You’re on the right track, though you may have better long-term luck checking with the university’s maker group or DIY electronics group for someone that can help
But you can post any questions here, be sure to go through each product’s hookup guide
Jon, when it’s all said and done, you’re probably going to need someone local to you (and the boats & water) and probably with a background in physio-metrics. You may in particular find more kindred souls within university organizations & clubs, perhaps athletic programs like the strength coach, ASME/automotive, biomed, physical therapy/sports medicine … besides the college rowers, maybe try others with long off seasons bicycling, skiing & golf clubs? (pun intended). There will be students but also faculty and advisors/older folks that might be interested.
In any case, I’d write up something to pitch what you have in mind: what you hope to accomplish and learn and to show what you’ve already built or done. Keep it to a page, for example, sketch or photograph a rowing machine and add notes indicating what you wish to improve or study. Your project is potentially interesting but not extremely so and you’ll get more help by asking about particular questions and problems.
Biomed might be the ticket! A student looking for a thesis project or a research paper idea might be really keen to even help with the data analysis and whatnot (funny enough that is what my BS is in! Biomedical Sciences)
Wishing the best! Update this thread with how it gets on
Thank your for your comments. Please let me apologize for my lack of clarity in my original post.
As I indicated, I have been working with a head strength coach for a university football team and a sports physical therapist. We have mapped out the biomechanics associated with rowing. They have identified key areas as a starting point that may be associated the with injury I am interested in. I have the mechanical design completed on how to measure the key forces in a boat on the water.
The University of Wisconsin has a published paper on measuring forces at the foot plate on a rowing machine. I have been in contact with the team leader who is in their Biomedical Engineering. She just gave me an update on what they have done since the paper was written. Multiple components in their setup originated from Sparkfun. Load Cell, HX711 Load Cell Amplifier feeding into an Arduion microcontroller on its serial port. They wrote their own code and feed the data into an external software package for analysis.
It has been 40 years since I have done anything with electronics, coding and computer interface at this level.
Today I purchased two sets parts for prototyping. One set is for me. The second set is for a rower that is in a STEM program. She is in a robotics class and she will take the parts to class to work with.
I purchased an OpenScale, OpenLog Artemis, TAS606 load Cell and other miscellaneous stuff for prototyping.
Load cell to OpenScale, OpenScale to OpenLog via serial port, CSV data to microSD card, SD card to my computer for analysis. My computer also has to talk to OpenScale and OpenLog to set them up.
I haven’t done this. But I am going to figure it out. Along the way I am going to hit road blocks. TS-Russell, I will use your advice and reach out asking specific questions when I hit roadblocks.
Again, my apologies for the lack of clarity on my request.
It seems unlikely you’ll find better experts than the authors of a recent rowing machine metrics engineering study for your own rowing machine metrics project. See if you can glom on to their project, it’s pretty on the nose.
@CoachJon - Keep us updated on your progress. As a number of the above responses have said, a local resource is definitely your best bet; someone that can see the installation as well as the code & the data thats coming back. That said, there are a few people (past & present) at SparkFun that rowed on their crew teams in college, so if you have a hyper specific “you need to have rowed in a boat on the water & practially designed/programmed this SparkFun board to understand what we need” we can brainstorm with them internally. Thanks!
In the mid 80’s, I designed a microcontroller board from the chips up and wrote the code to run a machine I designed. They didn’t have all this stuff back then.