Custom Circuit Clarification

[aldaeron]

I am interested in using a custom circuit board to reduce workload from the cRio processor and wanted to get some other experienced minds to review my thinking to make sure I didn't miss anything.

I have read all the rules in the Control, Command & Signals System Section.

What I would like to do is get a cheap FPGA or Arduino development board (under $400) and write a program to take camera data and process it. The board would be looking for the reflective rectangle using an image processing algorithm and return the centration error in X and Y (i.e. if the rectangle is not centered, how many pixels is it off center?). The board would then keep the values in a output buffer. The cRio would then read this error from the buffers using its digital inputs. This would allow the cRio to get the data it needs to make decisions about how to adjust the mechanisms and drive systems, but not waste a lot of time processing image data.

Would this type of custom circuit be legal? Essentially this is just a custom processing add on to the camera and makes no control inputs back to the robot system. It is just a number cruncher.

Thanks!