Programming six motor drive in Java (or c++)

[fovea1959]

We're a Java shop, and we are running 3 motors per side for drive this year (budget and space willing).

In the past, we have used PWM Y cables to make it all look like 4 motors. This year we want to control all 6 motors independently (easier to troubleshoot and find bad connections @ competition).

The Wpilib drive object only supports 4 motors tops. The solution we used was just to poke the Drive object as usual, then immediately interrogate a controller on each side for it's current power and poke that back into the 3rd motor on each side (the motor that is not part of the Drive object).

The other solution we contemplated was doing a Composite motor object; I think strongback has something like that.

Ours is working fine, but I'm curious how other people solved this problem?