Looking at the person who suggested LED lights... I want to say you've got a really good idea!
For those of you unfamiliar with these, I found google'd some pictures that'll show you what they look like. The idea is you take some LEDs - preferably surface-mount LEDs to save space - onto a flexible strip of plastic or something similar. The wiring is done on the strip itself so all that teams have to do is plug them in on one end of the strip and they go.
ADVANTAGES OF LED LIGHT STRIPS OVER ROTATING LIGHT:
1. Light weight - less weight you're required to put in, the more weight you CAN put in
2. Take up very little room - LED light strips can be mounted almost anywhere using just a little piece of velcro - you can have a strip mounted to the outside of each side of your robot - identification can't get much easier than that
3. No mechanical parts - no worrying or reports about the rotating motor breaking down
4. Very little current draw - more power can be directed to those massive 40amp breakers!
5. Neat strobe effects can be created using simple $1, $2 micros. The prospect of modding a strobe or night-rider-esque effect with microcontrollers would draw more programmers to doing something a bit more high-tech than writing measly code, attaching a wire to a laptop, and having it all magically work for you.
6. LED's don't burn out (unless you apply too much voltage to them) - although I've never really heard of teams having a problem with their lights burning out.
DISADVANTAGES:
1. Blue is a relatively expensive LED color - utra-bright red led's cost about 10-15 cents each, ultra-bright blue led's cost about 2 dollars each.
Can be solved by either buying in bulk, or making a different color alliance (like red vs green alliances).
2. If FIRST wants to make a 'light-equivalent' of leds (like was pictured above), it will probably have to be designed and built by them.
Can be solved by instead of designing a new led product, just giving 4 strips of LED's in the kit and having teams mount one strip on each side with velcro or something similar.
3. If FIRST would choose the 4-strip solution, theres the problem of swapping colors/strips.
Solutions:
- - Use LED strips with plug-and-go molex-like connectors and velcro
- - Mount both and wire a simple switch to control which turns on
- - Or if you want the ability to change alliances in mid-match to add the element of confusion and surprise to the game, do solenoid-like wiring on the relay for the two mounted strips so you could change alliances at the flip of a switch at the OI ;-)
Anyways, long story short, I think the advantages of using LED strips are really attractive and the disadvantages can be solved relatively easily. The biggest problem will be finding a supplier that can provide 4 (or 8, depending on the setup) x 1000 strips that will meet exactly what FIRST would require (brightness, size, connectors, etc) by next January. However, if they can find plastic mounts for motors designed to go into drills, I'm sure they'll be able to find a relatively simple LED product like this.