Victors or Jaguars
 

So here in Greenville, SC FIRST team 281 is trying to decide if we like jaguars or victors. So what I was hoping that you guys will help us decide. If you will say what you prefer and the pros and cons of that one. The electric team is leaning towards victors, the programmers like jaguars. I am personally sick of our CAN failures and at championships we heard teams tell us again and again tell us that victors never break EVER. In 2011 all 3 teams on the winning alliance used Victors this year I've contacted 180 and 25 who say victors while I havent been able to contact 16.

Re: Victors or Jaguars
 

Victors appear to be much less susceptible to FIRST-level abuse than Jaguars. (That's purely anecdotal -- but we've killed a good number of Jags and very rarely killed a Victor.)

Re: Victors or Jaguars
 

I've used both in the past, this year was 100% Jags because we used the CAN bus with no problems after we got it set up. Personally I like having the flexibility that CAN gives us and the closed loop being offboarded from the CRIO. The only failures I've had with Jags this year were due to human error (plugging in the power backwards or disconnecting the CAN cable).

The upside of Victors is that they are smaller, lighter, and a little less likely to shut off when pulling large amounts of current (the Jags have a cutoff limit that can be overloaded when going full forward to reverse).

My personal preference is Jags based on my love of CAN. If not for CAN I'd use Victors.

Re: Victors or Jaguars
 

I'll try to keep this simple, there's been a few topics up here about this:

Pro Victor:

1. Will pretty much provide power till they burn out.
2. Smaller footprint than Jaguar.
3. Graceful recovery from brownout.
4. Their PCBs are sealed against SWARF!

Con Victor:

A. No warning about faults.
B. Response time could be longer (depends on what you actually do with it).
C. PWM connectors can slip out if you don't hot glue.

Pro Jaguar:

1. Response time could be faster (depends on what you actually do with it).
2. I/O on the electronic motor control means some self-control.
3. Limits currents before breaker at fixed limits.
4. Built-in ideal PID (not ubiquitous in application).
5. Might need to buy the 2CAN under the right circumstances (the folks that make the 2CAN are really...really...supportive).

Con Jaguar:

A. FIRST has an RFQ posted to find someone to keep making them.
B. Limits currents before breaker at fixed limits.
C. Built-in ideal PID isn't always useful.
D. Sensitive to noise on encoders in some cases.
E. No ability to override the functions within it's FRC firmware.
F. CAN bus may be just as much wire, and it's a single point of failure.
G. Might need to buy the 2CAN under some circumstances (adds cost and parts).
H. Brownouts can be complicated and time consuming to recover.
I. Brownouts loose incremental encoder counts and might loose absolute encoder counts if the dead time is long enough.
J. RS232 - CAN bridge can be swamped.
K. Cables can be tricky to make, LinuxBoy is working on selling a nice little CAN terminator.
L. Some new Jaguars have manufacturing issues with the RJ connectors.
M. Beige Jaguars can melt off the current sense resistor.
N. Last years firmware could lock-up your whole robot under some conditions.
O. This years firmware could still lock-up your whole robot under a much smaller set of conditions.
P. I've seen once and heard from another mentor that there is a state you can get the Jaguar in that when FIRST disables them they go full on and stay there (oops).
Q. They have a physically larger footprint.
R. Their PCBs are generally not sealed against SWARF!
S. Do not remove the screws from the terminals...it's easy to do and can make SWARF!
T. Internal inspection is more difficult, but they are not sealed so they might need internal inspection sometimes to check for problems.

Ugh....okay that's all I can think of right now....alternates to either possibly look here:
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=105531

Re: Victors or Jaguars
 

We fried one or two drivetrain Jags last year, due to swarf that got inside them. They were mounted horizontally; i.e., flat side down. We could easily see the burnt mark on their circuit cards near where swarf had shorted two pins on one of the ICs.

This year, we used six Jags (drivetrain and shooter) and mounted them all vertically. This seems to have helped; no failures. Possibly the swarf (if any got inside) settled to the edge of the plastic case, away from the circuit card.

Anyway, I like Jags for their linear response and CAN interface. Victors are nice for their smaller footprint, and they might be more robust against swarf -- because they have fans.

Re: Victors or Jaguars
 

The Jaguars have an internal fan directly over the MOSFETs just like the Victors (it's just smaller and anything that hits it will still be inside the enclosure).

Re: Victors or Jaguars
 

Nice list of pros and cons, Brian.

Of course, as a software guy, I prefer the programability of the Jaguars, and the CAN bus. I just wish that we had a more robust solution with more knobs that we could tweak for any particular application.

Re: Victors or Jaguars
 

Our due to the size of the fans in the jaguar are teams use a second slightly larger fan (KoP) over the top of the original fan.

Re: Victors or Jaguars
 

Jag: somewhat less motor heating for the same motor output torque, under stall conditions.

Re: Victors or Jaguars
 

While most of what has been said is true, the Victor conformal coatings do not protect the MOSFET tabs and in some cases, FET leads may also be exposed. Most often neither are significant problems. The Victor has no internal fault conditions that affect the output.
The fault conditions in the Jags render the output disabled for about 3.5 seconds minimum. Faults are over current, under voltage and high temperature. The fan is controlled so it is not running all the time. The small amount of fan current is inconsequential in either device.
When not using the CAN bus please seal the CAN connectors so that debris does not enter the connectors.
In permanent fault, either can continue to produce output current when the robot is disabled. It seems that the Jags are more prone to this condition.

Re: Victors or Jaguars
 

This is correct. I'd like to add that the situation I've seen with the Jaguar fully on but disabled was not a permanent fault (at least not one where it happened and the unit never recovered...I still have the unit and it still works...don't know if it's entirely uninjured but it can drive a CIM).

The other mentor had a specific process to inducing this failure. He indicated to me that he had forwarded his findings to FIRST and was distressed they did not apparently respond to it.

I've never been able to replicate the fault beyond a very small number of late night sessions where I was hot on the trail of an unrelated issue.

Re: Victors or Jaguars
 

16 used jags on CAN. We had some issues with static early in the season, but the new 2CAN with improved ESD protection seems to have solved that problem.

Being able to monitor amps helps with motor protection and recognition of things like having balls in the beater bar (2010 & 2012).

Re: Victors or Jaguars
 

Our team went over the past few years from Victors, to jags, to jags with CAN, and now back to Victors.

We haven't had any Victors fail that I know of. Maybe years ago with a debris related failure, something like that. We have had at least a handful of Jags fail (especially the grey ones). And trying to get CAN working (reliably) was difficult. Also I don't like the single-point failure of one CAN cable going bad and taking out all the rest of the Jags...

Re: Victors or Jaguars
 

I would like to know the fault method, please. He can PM me.

Re: Victors or Jaguars
 

Team 20 has been using Jags since 2009 and CAN since 2010. Let me tell you, we have been rendered useless in (and presumably have lost) a not insignificant number of matches over that period of time due to Jag issues. It's frustrating to go back to the pits to find out that certain Jaguars browned out, or the CAN network timed out, or a Jag got burnt out. I will say that Jags are beautiful and elegant when CAN works properly, but oh so frustrating when you lose matches or can't perform because they fail where a victor simply wouldn't.

I'm not sure of this, but it seems like the tendency of a CAN to fail is proportional to the number of Jags. If you have 13 Jags in a CAN, you are more likely to have that single fatal failure than with 4 Jags in CAN. The problem is that if one goes down, they all go down.

All of that said, I think the plan for us moving forward will be to use victors in all applications except where a CAN would be particularly useful, if at all, but have a plan in place to switch to PWM on the fly. For applications like a turret or shooter wheels this year, the set position and set speed PID loops integral to the Jags in CAN was very useful. However, for other applications like a drive train or a collector system, the functionality of a victor will be sufficient. The idea is that victors will perform most functions, and then if we have any CAN Jags, a smaller network will be much easier to manage.