There are two ways to connect and operate pneumatic solenoid valves to trigger pneumatic cylinder movement using the current control system. One option is to hook the solenoids up to a Spike relay; to learn how to utilize solenoids connected in this manner in code see the article on Relays. The second option is to connect the solenoids to a Cross the Road Electronics Pneumatics Control Module. To solenoids connected to a PCM in code, use the WPILib "Solenoid" and/or "Double Solenoid" classes, detailed below.

The Pneumatics Control Module from Cross the Road Electronics allows for integrated closed loop control of a compressor. Creating any instance of a Solenoid or Double Solenoid object will enable the Compressor control on the corresponding PCM. The Compressor object is only needed if you want to have greater control over the compressor or query compressor status.

WPILib provides a RobotDrive object that handles most cases of driving the robot either in autonomous or teleop modes. It is created with either two or four speed controller objects. There are methods to drive with either Tank, Arcade, or Mecanum modes either programmatically or directly from Joysticks.

Note: the examples illustrated in this section are generally correct but have not all been tested on actual robots.

The WPI Robotics library has extensive support for motor control. There are a number of classes that represent different types of speed controllers and servos. The WPI Robotics Library currently supports two classes of speed controllers, PWM based motor controllers (Jaguars, Victors and Talons) and CAN based motor controllers (Jaguar). WPILIb also contains a composite class called RobotDrive which allows you to control multiple motors with a single object. This article will cover the details of PWM motor controllers, CAN controllers and RobotDrive will be covered in separate articles.

The base class is the framework that the robot code is constructed on top of. WPILib offers two different base classes, as well as a third option which is not technically a separate base class.