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Originally Posted by Rickertsen2
I think some more specific and hopefully permissive rules concerning the OI are in order this year. We can sit around and find grey areas all we want but there is still a pretty good chance of our arguements not working with a particular inspector. Hopefully someone like Lavery will take notice of this thread and we will see these grey areas turn a little lighter this year.
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Jim,
I think you give me too much credit. Inspectors don't make the rules or interpret them for the most part but we do receive training to make sure we know the intent. In this particular case, the OI rules are more driven by IFI than by any electrical person. The OI was designed for ease of use, interface, etc. and LEDs were considered part of that design. To prevent damage to the OI (and to simplify design) the outputs are current limited so that they only drive LEDs. You can think of it this way...The circuitry has an ouput that swimgs between 0 and +5 volts and there is a resistor in series with the outputs that is selected to provide 10ma to an LED. That means there will not be 5 volts available at the output. With a 10ma load expect the output to only be 2 volts, the standard drop across a forward biased LED.
Now that being said, I would love to have some relaxation of the electrical rules for the OI. Students are coming up with great ideas all the time, many like those in this thread. I would love to see some of them implemented, under the rules of course.