Hey tmox,
You'd be bitter off reconsidering your mechanism. Using some minimum constraint design techniques, you could develop a system that could operate off of one cylinder. I could offer support on that or you could refer to a book like Lawrence Kamm's Designing Cost Efficient Mechanisms...
I don't do a lot of embedded software development - mostly mechanical designs.
I found the Animatics Smart Motor system fairly easy to pick up. The all-in-one system makes everything pretty simple. I wish it could handle some floating point calcs, though.
CHUCK
Pitzer Consulting