[SteveGarward]

Originally Posted by Munchskull

I am sure FIRST would allow it but my understanding is that I would then have to have a way to market the board to other teams, making it fiscally impossible to make a custom board.

This is correct. However that does not prevent you from making it to try things out, which I highly recommend.

This year we made a number of custom boards. After our initial boards made through the beta test period, we decided with the current rulings, we were best to avoid anything that would potentially present itself as a problem during inspection (due to interpretation of rules), and made 3 boards which would all communicate over I2C.

Due to space issues, we ended up cramming all three boards into one Mega Ultra Maxi board, which would plug into the MXP directly. Essentially, this board houses 3 Arduino clones, repackaged to suit our needs. These all still only communicated over I2C. The presence of rows of pins for our hall effect sensors always raised some questions during inspection, since they look like PWM headers. Ultimately, the flow chart given in the team update was our friend - we could point to it and say 'it doesn't control anything - it's just a custom circuit'. When inspectors see ANY components on an MXP board, the initial reaction has been to call it an ACTIVE board.

Where was I going with this?

I'd stay away from altering or using any power or signal pathways on any IO/PWM pin from the MXP. As much as it would be nice to have it, if it rules your board illegal, where you could have the board without LEDs and not have to set yourself up as a vendor and have distributions channels, I personally think that would be the better route to take. You can still make one that lights up for practice/testing/off-season, and who knows what the rules will state next year!