Illegal?

[Al Skierkiewicz]

Daniel,
Besides the fact that the inverter puts out a very high voltage and requires better insulation on wiring than that provided in the kit, there could be any number of reasons to prevent it's use. The inverter should be considered a custom circuit and therefore can only feed the RC under the robot rules.

<R61> All outputs from the custom circuits must connect to the Robot Controller or to other custom circuits.

You might claim that is a non-functional decoration but decorations can only draw power from the 12 volt main battery, the inverter is the power source to the lamp, not the main battery.

<R110> Decorations may draw power from the 12v electrical system as long as they are powered via a dedicated 20A or 30A circuit breaker and do not affect the operation of other control system components.

You might even argue that custom circuits can and frequently do have local power supply regulators and/or negative power supply generators, but again the voltage is not higher than the main battery and those devices still follow the rules for custom circuits.

The lamps themselves are not roboust as anyone who built lights in 2006 can attest. I would venture to guess that several hundred lamps gave their lives to an errant ball during last year's game. Broken lamps produce dust and slivered glass. I wouldn't want to do a belly check on a robot and lay down in a pile of phosphor and glass out on the field.

Small, intense, light sources play havoc with CCD cameras especially those without an iris mounted in front of the pickup. The particular device linked in the first post is a "black light" or ultra violet output device. Although it has some visible light output, there is considerable radiation outside the visible spectrum. CCD pickups are capable of detecting a rather wide spectrum including IR and UV and this device would likely cause some interference.

Sorry, but I have to stand by my original response. Really cool but not for use on an FRC robot.