Talons without libraries?

[GeeTwo]

Are you speaking of a Talon SR or SRX? The SR accepts PWM input (that is, pulse duration, not duty cycle) but does not have any sensor inputs, so you can't use it to query the encoder. The SRX is a CAN bus controller which does have sensor inputs, including an encoder port. I have not yet used CAN apart from monitoring current use on the PDB; I have no idea how difficult it would be to create a CAN port on a microcontroller. If you licked that problem, then yes, you would be able to monitor the encoder through the same CAN bus that you used to control the motor. The neat thing about CAN is that if you build a single CAN controller, you can use it to drive several devices. You would not be using PWM, however.