[Matt Krass]

Originally Posted by andreboos

As I see it, the breakout is merely a modification of the sidecar and breakouts, as if I had disassembled two sidecars and glued their respective PCBs together, which would not violate <R55>. <R54> is satisfied because the breakout board is a digital sidecar in all important respects (electrically equivalent).

Since the refs and inspectors and FTAs rely on the expected behavior of the robot signal light, I suspect they'll be rather stubborn on this particular requirement. While your system may not affect that performance at all, it's additional burden on the inspectors and other crew members to ensure your custom approach is as valid as the standard approach every other team uses. It simply isn't feasible, especially since it falls in the realm of "allow one, allow all". I can't even imagine the havoc of having to inspect so many different versions of the standard unit and making sure they're compatible.

Honestly, it's more than just a breakout board, it handles a lot of the stickier electrical and signal conditioning aspects for you as well, as well as physical compatibility. I think if you tried to replace it you'd find your replacement very similar to the original sidecar, or not very effective.

Matt