WPILib without FRC-style comms on cRIO

[Toa Circuit]

I know with ThunderRIO we can still develop for the cRIO.
My question is this: Is it possible to communicate using WPILib or something like WPILib to PWM motor controllers, solenoids, CANJaguars, etc., without having to use the IterativeRobot/SimpleRobot/FRC Communication Protocol? I.E.; a robot fully autonomous and not connected to a PC, or a robot using a roll-your-own communication protocol?

[JohnSmooth42]

I believe the virtual RobotMain() function in WPILib can actually help you with that. I'm not entirely sure though.

[Thad House]

The issue with doing this is that the FPGA is what actually controls the motors, and the way it is programmed from FIRST requires a connection to a driver station to do this. So the only way to do it without having a connected computer would be to rewrite the FPGA code. Another option is to put a computer running the driver station physically on the robot, but make sure if you do this you still have a way to kill everything if something goes wrong.

[Aero]

There's nothing stopping you from writing a driver station client on the robot and connecting it to localhost ;)

There's a few open-source driverstations out there, just pick your favorite & run it on the RIO. Disabling is the only part that worries me.