Advantages of the Jaguars?
 

While it is clear the Jaguars have a lot of new features, it seems we won't be allowed to take advantage of them in the 2009 season. They have a few wire clips and a nice cover for the fan. Other than that, they are slightly heavier, considerably larger, and in much shorter supply than the victors. What advantages do they have over good ol' victors, aside from being shiny and new?

Re: Advantages of the Jaguars?
 

Disclaimer: I am a mentor for Team 2468 by night, but a systems engineer at Luminary Micro by day. So, I am biased.

Pros:
- Jaguar costs less than a Victor 884, more than $40 less ($73.33 vs $114.99).
- Better output linearity (see http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...6&postcount=86). If you want to see a demonstration of this, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_X0_aFMpm9I.
- Integrated limit switch inputs (one forward, one reverse)[*].
- Controlled fan turns on only when H-bridge is generating a non-zero output voltage (8 fans amount to 0.5 A).

Cons:
- Bigger than the Victor 884.
- New kid on the block; teams have less experience with Jaguar compared to the Victor 884.

I am not sure how you determined the availability of one controller compared to the other. You can check the inventory at Digi-Key, but this doesn't indicate how many are in the pipeline (only how many are currently in Digi-Key's warehouse).

[*] The status of the limit switch can be made available to the cRIO with a small circuit that I will publish as a Jaguar application note after the holidays. This circuit is necessary in order to assure that additional ground paths are not created from the motor controller through the DSC.

Re: Advantages of the Jaguars?
 

As far as availability, I was referring to the fact that most teams probably have a few victors lying around, and many veteran teams definitely have a lot of victors lying around. I wasn't aware of the lower price, however. Also, the output linearity tests you linked to were very definitive. I had no idea the victors were so poor :eek:.

At this point, I am much more impressed with the Jaguars than I was initially. Now we just need to find an efficient way to organize these.

Re: Advantages of the Jaguars?
 

The new Jags are also thermally and current limited. With the Victors we have been running open loop and things just kept going until something fried or a breaker tripped. In the real world companies that design motor controllers and use variable speed motor have to contend with something called a warranty. Protections are essential if a company doen't want to go bankrupt from warranty claims.

Re: Advantages of the Jaguars?
 

Yep.. and teams are free to choose what they want to use.

This constantly disturbs me. Luminary Micro is providing a price brealk for FRC teams, but you have to go to a specific Digi-Key web page. Otherwise, the cost to NON-FRC teams is $109, which is only a 6 advantage. Please use http://sales.digikey.com/dkes/FirstR...ompetition.asp if you decide to order more Jaguars beyond those provided in the KoP. This link is also available at the bottom of the Jaguar web site at Luminary Micro (http://www.luminarymicro.com/jaguar).

One of our students came to the simple observation that if you stand on on its end (with the cable retention clips pointing up to the sky) you can put two of them back to back (fans facing in opposite directions) and take only a little more space than laying flat on a table. Our team will probably experiment with this orientation if space becomes tight.

Re: Advantages of the Jaguars?
 

Add to the list of Pros "the cool name"

In the future (2010 or beyond) the ability to run these on a CAN Bus will prove to be valuable to some teams.

The Jaguars have all of the features of the Victors - and much more, along with better linearity and range, plus they are less expensive to teams. A win-win-win all around.

One thing I'm worried about is the ability to clean them. With the victors, if we suspected a bit of wire or metal shaving accidentally got in there, we could clean it with compressed air easily. Does anyone know how the cover comes off a Jaguar for cleaning?

Don

Re: Advantages of the Jaguars?
 

One of the college students on 2815 was able to open one up and re-close it without incident. (Have to show the kids all the juicy innards, yes?)

Re: Advantages of the Jaguars?
 

I just hope their more robust then the victors. I don't know how many wasted hours(in about 5-10min blocks) we spent trying to get the things to get a single. It would get it once, then the robot terns off and back on then all the sudden it doesn't have a single...those little flashing red LEDs would give our team a collective a "sigh".

But hey they were free, and they ran our robot straight through championships.

Re: Advantages of the Jaguars?
 

I don't mean to pick on you, but I've seen a lot of posts like this.

The only failures we have EVER experienced with the IFI system and any of it's components have been our own fault.

We have had only a couple incidents I can recall. One fried an entire RC, a couple other times we had connectors shear off of it because of our own stupidity.

My point is that if you experienced systematic problems with the IFI control system, it was probably something you were doing incorrectly, because when used properly all of IFI's stuff just plain works. Do their products have things that could be better? Sure, everything does, but what they have is pretty darn good.

It's also not fair to IFI, who has been a fantastic supporter of FIRST, to insinuate that their products are anything less than quality, which is clearly not the case.

Re: Advantages of the Jaguars?
 

First of all, yea i have to agree with this. Any team that has ever asked us for help with any of the IFI system components has explained their problem and then we found out that it was their own fault that made them have a system failure or a fried part.

Secondly, I know my POV on this subject, but do you guys think that the benefits outweigh the drawbacks? ie: weight (nto so much) but size?

Re: Advantages of the Jaguars?
 

The footprint is larger, yes, but it's not bad at all. The future ability of using CAN far outweighs the size issue. I can't wait to get rid of these PWM cables.

Re: Advantages of the Jaguars?
 

For 2009, I still see the victors as the clear choice due to their size. The jaguars really don't have any features (legal for use in 2009) that outweigh their massive size.

Re: Advantages of the Jaguars?
 

How do we turn off this feature to run the fans constantly? Once hot, a FET wants to be cooled down even if it is not passing current. And I hope this doesn't mean the fans are connected to the output of the H bridge.

Re: Advantages of the Jaguars?
 

Al,

This post seems to indicate that the conditions for the fans shutting off are that the motor is off, and 10 seconds have passed, and the temperature is below 38°C (roughly 100°F). I'd assume that's a safe temperature for the Jaguars, since they set the number.

Re: Advantages of the Jaguars?
 

Bill beat me to it.

Al, They don't turn off as soon as current is removed. In my experience, as soon as you ask the Jag to do something that fans turn on. Once you stop working the Jags, the fans stay on for a certain period of time (~ 1 minute). I'm not sure if it is time or temp dependent.

Re: Advantages of the Jaguars?
 

Scott and Bill
I guess the question then arises, is this an "or" function? The fan turns off after 10 seconds or the temp is below 38 degrees? Is the temperature sensor part of the circuit board or is it attached (thermally) to a FET? I am asking since we have not yet opened one and it will be a while before we get back into the shop.

Re: Advantages of the Jaguars?
 

Ditto here.
You mean aside from integrated end-limit switch inputs, a far more linear response curve and range, thermal and overcurrent protection, smart fans, clearer markings (can't miss that red screw) and better cost, all of which the Jaguars have and Victors do not?


.

Re: Advantages of the Jaguars?
 

If you can't make them fit on the robot, then those features don't really add much value.

Re: Advantages of the Jaguars?
 

Actually, I'm going to have to vote against the screws.

If the screws were captured, that's one thing. However, they're not. And they're very easy to completely unscrew. They're also not error-proofed and can be put back in the wrong holes.

The result is that someone could accidently wire them backwards. I'd much rather they get rid of the colored screws and color something that can't be reversed or removed.

I understand that a bit of caution prevent this issue most of the time. But I don't think that anyone can argue that if it CAN happen, it WILL happen.

Re: Advantages of the Jaguars?
 

We've released the magic white smoke on a number of Victors in the past few years, and to our knowledge, we hadn't done anything wrong, (aside from not being careful enough with metal shavings falling in). I am, however, more inclined to believe you. What could we have done wrong to burn them out? What happened to you guys?

Hopefully with this knowledge and some care, we won't burn out any more victors, or jaguars if they are prone to the same weak points.

Re: Advantages of the Jaguars?
 

As far as I know, we've only had one Victor fail, and it seems to have been bad in the box, because it did not work when we first put the robot together, and we always treat the Victors carefully. That's still a pretty good success rate.

The room issue...hmmm....looks like our new chassis design

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...threadid=70758

has plenty of room for Jaguars.

Re: Advantages of the Jaguars?
 

If you're constantly burning up any electronics, I'd reassess your work practices.

Are you drilling over the robot? If so, are you covering your electronics with a towel or something else to prevent chips from falling in them?

Have you dropped screws, nuts, etc into the robot?

Have you used a compressed air line near the robot and potentially blown metal chips into it?

Victors don't just smoke themselves of their own accord, so there must be something that's user specific that is causing them to die.

As to what we've done, chips in the robot have caused problems before. A chip shorted out our RC and fried it in Hawaii last year. The program connector and power connectors have been sheared off the RC due to mishandling.

If you're careful with all of the electronic items we get in the kit, they should last you a long time, regardless of who made them.

Re: Advantages of the Jaguars?
 

I completely agree. In 2006, our RC stopped working during competition, and we eventually figured out it was because a metal chip had landed in the pins. Ever since then, we've been careful to cover the electronics whenever we worked on the robot, especially when drilling holes. We haven't had any problems since.

Re: Advantages of the Jaguars?
 

Last year we burnt out 2 or 3 victors between build season and four competitions. The compressed air and the holes were probably our weak points. We usually cover the electronics and hold a vacuum to the drill, but at a few points we may have gotten lazy. Sometimes the mentality spreads that all chips can simply be cleaned up later before we turn the robot on, but that clearly must be avoided.

Re: Advantages of the Jaguars?
 

The fan is controlled by a separate, smaller, MOSFET; the fan is not controlled by the H-bridge.

The fan turns on whenever there is a non-zero voltage produced at the output. The fan turns off after the following three conditions are met: a) the output goes to 0 V, b) 10 seconds have passed, and c) the internal temperature is below 38C. If the temperature is not below this threshold, the fans stay on after the 10 s period.

Re: Advantages of the Jaguars?
 

AND function.

The temperature sensor monitors the ambient temperature; it isn't attached to a specific MOSFET.

Re: Advantages of the Jaguars?
 

Scott,
Can you disclose the type and number of Power FETs used in the Jaguar? I don't have access to one for a while during the holidays.

Re: Advantages of the Jaguars?
 

Sure can. Jaguar is a design example, so the information for it is pretty available.

3 Fairchild FDP8874 MOSFETs for each quadrant of the H-Bridge; 12 in total.

Re: Advantages of the Jaguars?
 

You can get a lot more information from Luminary Micro's Non-FIRST specific site. http://www.luminarymicro.com/products/mdl_bdc.html

Re: Advantages of the Jaguars?
 

I'll bite, as no one is on some of these things. These are all for 2009, as 2009 is the season people are debating right now. I don't care what will be enabled later or what they can do later on right now (I'll be stoked when they are though), I just care about what they do right now.

End-limit Switch Inputs; In the past few years, I've used limit switches only on one mechanism, and we wanted the state of that switch for other operations in the code. So, we can wire it directly to the controller and just toggle the motor on and off, OR we can build a little circuit (another possible failure point) that has to be plugged into the jaguar and the controller? I'm completely not fine with having the limit switch only connected to the jaguar and the controller not knowing the state, that's just potential for disaster.

Far More linear response; I have yet to see them tested on one of my team's bases, but I think this may be the jaguars one true advantage. Smoother control, sounds good to me.

Thermal and overcurrent protection; I'm always the guy on the team trying to push components to their limits, trying to get that last competitive drop of performance out of them. Since my 2005 season (only because I can't recall back further), I've never seen a motor burn out on a competition robot, and only have ever seen on victor fail (due to faulty wiring) which wasn't due to overhearting. This is really a non issue with me. Sure, it's great, it's a feature... but it's not addressing something that was a problem with the Victors.

Clearer markings; Oooooh... my team has heard a lot of this one from me. The markings (as other people have said) are actually WORSE than before... you mark the screws? Well, I've seen kids take off both screw per side to wire up, not good practice, but it happens. If they get put back backwards once, human nature will probably keep it from being noticed for a while. I imagine inexperienced teams having an epidemic of problems with this.

Better Cost; This one really changes on a team per team basis. For my team, when we compare the categories for selecting speed controller, we won't simply say, "Oh, the Jaguar is $75. That's way cheaper than a victor. Lets use that". We're going to look at the total cost. Right now, we have 13-15 Victors ready to go for next year, and 4 Jaguars. If we decide on all Jaguars, and possibly up to 20 speed controllers, that's a lot of money, substantially more than just trading for a few victors.

So, right now, for this season, the one advantage (for non rookie/2nd year teams with minimal victors on hand) is the smoother performance. For right now, that's not enough to outweigh what our team see's as the cons. For the 2010 season, I expect the debate will be entirely different, but the fact is, I'm not worried about the 2010 season at this time.

I really hope people will weigh all the pros and cons rather than just citing how "improved" the jaguar is.

This isn't coming from a bias towards IFI either. I love IFI, think they're great people. I also love AndyMark, think they're great people. But if someone else comes out and markets a better speed controller and a better 2 speed COTS gearbox (assuming both legal to use), we're sure as heck going with the better stuff.

But hey, if any of you guys want to get rid of those terrible victors, my team would be willing to trade and take that burden off your hands.

Re: Advantages of the Jaguars?
 

Sounds like a pretty straightforward decision for you then.

Re: Advantages of the Jaguars?
 

Adam,
Since the Jaguars have a large, and light colored case, might I suggest the prudent use of a red and black magic marker now before the screws are removed. I would hope that the new rules for this season will allow the end limit inputs to be controlled by digital outputs of the controller. That way, you have the best of both worlds.

Re: Advantages of the Jaguars?
 

Al, when we unpacked them we marked them with some sharpie for that reason (totally not my idea at first, had read someone reccomend it here on CD). A student one upped me and is designing labels we can print that look rather nice.

I'm not sure about the digital outputs controlling the limit inputs. Wouldn't it be more reliable to simply toggle the motor in code?

Re: Advantages of the Jaguars?
 

Just backing up the backup.

Re: Advantages of the Jaguars?
 

Hi Scott,

Please explain precisely where the ambient temperature is being measured.

Re: Advantages of the Jaguars?
 

The LM3S2616 microcontroller has an integrated temperature sensor. Each H-bridge period initiates the measurement of the motor current, the battery voltage, the ANA input value, and the temperature.

Re: Advantages of the Jaguars?
 

I slightly disagree

our team was going to run 100% victors for our system (6 total)

bur we discovered the one advantage the jag has over the vic (and is 2009 legal)- at really low speeds, the jag has MUCH better control than the vic. for our shooter, this is crucial in dump mode- so we switched the one. this came important- this switch won Buckeye this year. :D :D :D :D