[mikets]

Okay, I am convinced it's not worth doing at the competition. However, in the spirit of learning the intention behind the rules, I would still like to understand why. I understand it's about safety. But would somebody tell me why is my proposed setup not equivalent to the onboard setup? It has the same model pressure switch that will cut off compressor power. It's using the same compressor model and spike as the onboard system. The only difference is the missing cRIO. Regarding the Emergency stop feature, there is a master power switch. We can using a giant red button for it. Again, I will not do this for the competition but at the shop when we are building the robot, there is always a need for the build team to test the pneumatic system while the electronics is being worked on in parallel. We have a modular design so each subsystem can be built and tested separately. This setup will benefit that scenario. The students have been just powering an external compressor with a battery and I always don't like it. If I understand the safety concern, we will be able to build a safe testing setup.
We have many test setup in our shop to make life easier for the build team. For example, we have a PWM generator feeding a Talon so we can test motors without the cRIO. So the pneumatic test setup is equivalent to that.