Cannot Have Decorative Lights While Disabled?

[RyanCahoon]

We were thinking about putting lights on our robot as well, and I have been similar problems navigating the rules.

My personal interpretation of [R50] is that it's only for actuators, and so the GDC's response was motivated by non-functional decorations that include motors, but I agree that their response does not seem to be thus limited, which causes problems for us.

To me, [R47] seems be somewhat of a problem as well, if you wanted to make the lights switchable (e.g. lights on in disabled mode, off during game play, which is what we were thinking) using something other than a Spike:

Originally Posted by R47

Custom circuits shall not directly alter the power pathways between the battery, PD Board, speed controllers, relays, motors, or other elements of the Robot control system (including the power pathways to other sensors or circuits). Custom high impedance voltage monitoring or low impedance current monitoring circuitry connected to the Robot’s electrical system is acceptable, if the effect on the Robot outputs is inconsequential.

(emphasis mine)

As far as I can tell, though, the only rule regulating what can be used to control a Spike is [R60]:

Originally Posted by R60

Every relay module, servo, and PWM speed controller shall be connected via PWM cable to the Digital Sidecar and be controlled by signals provided from the cRIO via the Digital Sidecar. They shall not be controlled by signals from any other source.

Which seems to allow them to be controlled using Digital I/O ports, which, if I remember correctly, are available regardless of robot state (somebody correct me if I'm wrong, that might have been only for the old IFI controllers). I wouldn't wire up a motor-controlling device using this method, but for controlling lights it doesn't seem unreasonable to me.