[pribusin]

There are many ways to connect physical switches to your DS if you want to do that vs software buttons on your SmartDashboard. Many revolve around using USB connected I/O boards that mimic an HID class such as a joystick. Or you could just use an old joystick to cannibalize the innards and rewire the button inputs to physical switches on your DS. It'll then show up as another joystick and you just use the buttons as usual.