[ToddF]

Maybe your team could tweak your project slightly. While the need for a battery checker is already fulfilled by an off the shelf product, there is another application you could focus on.

Our team has found that it is best if the drive team keeps its eyes on the robot, rather than looking down at the drivers station displays for data. But each year, there is usually some piece of data which would be useful for them to know. This year we have a pneumatic catapult. We want to know if the pressure in the system is above the threshold to be good to fire. We have installed a pressure sensor and will turn on a light on the robot if the pressure is good.

Last year, we wanted to know how many disks were in the hopper. We ran out of time to implement that. The year before, we wanted to know if the shooter wheel was at speed to properly shoot a basketball. Even when there isn't some sensor, it would be nice to have a visual indicator on the robot of how much time is left in the match.

Your led display idea could be adapted to provide a useful visual indicator given some sort of sensor input (linear voltage, encoder pulse, timer start pulse etc.). If you were creative, you could make both the input type and the display output configurable. This custom circuit would relieve the robot computer of valuable cycle time. If it were easily configurable, it could be a last minute addition on practice day which did not require potentially bug inducing code modifications.

If it existed as a product, with a reasonable price, we'd probably buy it.