What are you trying to do with the T-shirt shooter? If you provide some specs we may be able to offer better suggestions.
If all you need is basic control then an RC setup may be all you need. Something like the
AM Cheap & Dirty control system.
The
Sasquatch Robot Controller or RobotOpen from Team221 will give you more control.
A lot of teams use a
VEX cortex to replace their cRIO on old robots.
There are also some much cheaper custom options if you only need a few controls.