[Mike Copioli]

This is an example of what we had envisioned when designing the SRX encoder breakout.

We found that mounting a PCB directly to the Talon's housing is not without risk. Foreign objects such as wrenches, misplaced hands... would damage the PCB and sometimes the Talons data connector.

The other concern, there is no female counter part to the Data connector, at least not one that is keyed. This would make it possible to insert the breakout backwards, which could damage both the Talon and the down-stream device.
Since there is no easy way to enforce polarity we felt it would cause less stress for teams to have a breakout that was inline with the Talons wiring.