The 2017 FRC Control System consists of a wide variety of mandatory and optional software components designed to assist you in the design, development and debugging of your robot code, control robot operation, and provide feedback to assist with troubleshooting. For each software component this document will provide a brief overview of its purpose, a link to the package download if appropriate, and a link to further documentation where available.

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.

SmartDashboard uses NetworkTables to send data between the robot and the Dashboard (Driver Station) computer. NetworkTables sends data as name, value pairs, like a distributed hashtable between the robot and the computer. When a value is changed in one place, its value is automatically updated in the other place. This mechanism and a standard set of name (keys) is how data is displayed on the SmartDashboard.

There is a hierarchical structure in the name space creating a set of tables and subtables. SmartDashboard data is in the SmartDashboard subtable and LiveWindow data is in the LiveWindow subtable as shown below.

For informational purposes the names and values can be displayed using the TableViewer application that is installed in the same location as the SmartDashboard. It will display all the NetworkTable keys and values as they are updated.