Answered: Custom Sensor Housing

VEX Robotics Competition Discussion VRC > Starstruck (16/17)
1

As rule R15 states

Motors (including the internal PTC), extension cords, sensors, controllers, battery packs, reservoirs, solenoids, pistons and any other electrical component or pneumatics component of the VEX Robotics Design System may NOT be altered from their original state in ANY way.

According to R15, we cannot modify sensors in any way.

I understand not being able to modify sensors, but the housing is also considered illegal to modify. See link below for a thread where this was previously stated.

On my current Starstruck robot, I have put tracking wheels on the robot. Because of the wheel we are using, the wheel didn’t touch the ground because of the shaft encoder. So, we shaved the corners off of the sensor housing. This leaves the sensor functioning the exact same way as it did previously. I would like to make my own housing for the sensor using VEX legal parts, and I would if it were legal. I didn’t know about R15 when we made this modification. The housing would be made from VEX legal parts. There would NOT be any parts that weren’t VEX legal.

I’m curious on why it is currently illegal to modify sensor housing?

Thank you in advance!

Forum post where this was previously stated here

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Sensors are not to be modified as per <R15>. There’s too much that can go wrong with modifying electronics, and we do not want to put teams in a position where they could be inadvertently causing damage. We understand that you just want to modify the housing, however that leads us down a slippery slope. It is much easier for inspectors to enforce this rule if we minimize the number of exceptions.