[Greg McKaskle]

Sorry to be getting to this late. The MXP is a standard developed for myRIO and utilized for roboRIO. At least some of the drawings, tools, and documents are there because myRIO is used for college level design classes. If you don't need SPICE and don't want to expose the kids to it, I don't think anyone is going to twist your arm. If your comment is that some basic information is missing, please ask and I'm sure it can be provided.

As for the mechanical design. There are inserts for screwing the MXP card to the roboRIO, and the assumption was that this would be a common approach. The MXP docs also defines a planar variant that is intended to be used on myRIO side connectors. It is the team's design, and if you would rather have the board extend up into the robot, that is your choice, but unless the board is tiny, I suspect it will better serve as a lesson in how not to do mechanical design. Thus the recommendation is to use the ninety degree connection and screw the accessory to the roboRIO.

The primary goal with the MXP was to open up and more fully support the daughter-card or co-processors that a few teams implement. This can be limited to physical connector selection or can include integrated sensors and even processing. Even with the documentation, there is a chance of failure. There is also an opportunity for more open discovery and innovation. Please let us know how to improve it.

Greg McKaskle