Wonder if this problem would be reduced by some mechanism of incurring cost on job positions that advertise for more requirements. (A heavy handed approach would be to charge an additional fee/tax if you require university educated persons for a position not requiring one)
I'm sure there's a general rule of thumb where this approach works best as an approximation (such as a simple on/off switch)... which may give us opportunities to simplify the BOM list further with cheaper parts at cost to accuracy which wouldn't apply to PCB anyway.
Where I mostly seen this approach is with 3D printers where we just want to know if the nozzle is touching the print base.
But if we can quantify the general worse case variation between most PCBs then maybe we can create a recommended strain sensor element with a semi-quantified level of accuracy so it's not just an on/off sense.
Be interesting if there is a rad hard watchdog. Maybe you could end up having standard off the self parts and then use a reliable watchdog to intervene as needed.
Especially if such watchdog has the ability to switch to a secondary or third backup...
edit: Shoutout to wildzzz for pointing out ISL706ARH
Active Rad-Hard, 5.0V/3.3V µ-Processor Supervisory Circuits
Right, having a second chip functioning as a watchdog which doesn't share the same silicon substrate mitigates the latchup. If you can recover before both theoretically could get struck, statistically you'll be okay. For added safety, have an extra one that is not coplanar with the other two so a single heavy ion strike can't pass through all 3 chips.
You may want to also consider ENC28J60 'Stand-Alone Ethernet Controller with SPI Interface' which lacks a hardware TCP/IP stack and is purely an Ethernet MAC and PHY accessible over SPI. This simplicity means it should be easier for you to get started with sending an ethernet packet. But of course if you want TCP/IP you will need to supply your own software implementation instead.
Provided that isolation is not required... it be nice if there is a 'type-c power/data router' where you can plug multiple devices to and get both power and data though. The box itself just needs to have a gigabit port and a power port.
Requires device makers to make port be both PD and at least USB ethernet host. The router perhaps can try simulating usb ethernet gadget or something.
Or maybe we could have 'layered' configs with shared community layers? Thus in that sense it becomes a series of defaults good for people in specific context like different countries or professions.
