Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

For our kitbot we had two Jaguars, each controlling a pair of CIM motors geared together with the toughbox. It worked fine for a long time, but one day while the team was driving it around one of the Jaguars stopped working entirely. There wasn't a lot of smoke or anything--maybe just the faintest burning smell that we may have just imagined anyway--but the thing is broken.

I'm guessing that if you use them properly though, they are just fine.

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

All
Let's NOT turn this thread into a he said/she said yada, yada, yada ....
Your points have been made, enough said.

This thread (and our website) has had the people directly responsible for the product respond and plead for any & all additional information from the teams that have had problems. That is a legitimate request and it should be honored if at all possible.

Let's keep this thead focused on teams having problems with them posting here, so we only have one place to collect the responses without all of the additional opinions and suggestions about alternatives. If you want to discuss alternatives to using the Jaguars, or what a travesty this is for rookies, or any other related issues, then create a different thread to discuss those elsewhere.

It will be much more meaningful if we all keep to the topic - reporting problems with failing jaguars.

Mike Aubry
Chief Delphi - Team 47

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

Tim,
It is at this point that I jump in with suggestions to all teams. Swap out the alligator clips that come with your battery chargers and install a 50 amp battery connector in their place. The clips are far too dangerous for our applications and the temptation is to connect the clips to the battery connector rather than the battery terminals. When teams do this they scratch the surface of the 50 amp contacts causing high resistance and potential connector failure. The cost of a 50 amp Anderson plug and two contacts is tiny compared to a lost match or a damaged battery and/or charger. Robot Inspectors and UL safety people will be watching for these unsafe practices.

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

Team 2171 Crown Point IN lost one Jaguar today.

Same as many other reports, was working fine. Nothing unusual happened other than it just quit working in one direction. No reason that we can determine why it would fail.

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

1793 lost one today, apparently the usual case, stopped working in one direction.

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

Yep, we lost one with no apparent sparking, misconnection, or loss of magic smoke. Basically, we just lost the ability to run half our drivetrain after we hit a wall due to a connection problem.

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

I was informed yesterday by one of our programmers that we also had one go on us also. I didn't get the details behind what happened though, as I was too busy trying to finish the practice robot. Sorry. Will try to find out and post additional info this coming week.

Mike Aubry

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

We lost a 3rd unit today. Still operates in one direction. Brake mode no longer brakes, but coasts instead.

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

Team 1153 lost a Jaguar on Saturday.

We are using a CIM to power a central screw, using a toughbox, that lifts the balls up to the shooter. We had about 20 hours of hard use on this Jaguar. Three balls jammed in the screw [1st time it has happened], the motor started to slow down, the driver hit the screw reverse button to unload the stuck balls and the screw stopped, and we smelled that burning smell. The power was turned off and everything checked, the stuck balls removed. When powered back up, even with the drivers station in disable mode, the jaguar gave full power to the screw [forward direction]. We then replaced the Jaguar.

Overall we are very happy with the Jaguars. We have been driving an old robot for about 2 months using Jaguars, connected to CIMS for power. The old robot and now our prototype has been driven daily by the kids with no troubles, until the big jam up.

I will send an email to luminarymicro with all the details as well

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

We had one burn out the other day. We are willing to swtich Victor(s) for a trade-off! (We have a few that we are willing to trade for a Jaguar)

PM me if you are interested!

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

We just lost our second one...for both, they were working fine, and then at one point in time they just stopped working and blinking red.

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

We are grateful for those of you on this thread that have contacted us and provided us with additional data! (Keep it coming!) Although I admit that it may not seem like it on this specific thread, it still appears that a vast majority of teams are quite successful in using their Jaguar units. That said, we are committed to get to the bottom of the failures that appear to be occurring in clusters, and the jury is still out as to whether these cluster failures are due to hardware, software, component failures, or inadvertent misuse. We are still eager to hear from the following teams (with a few new ones since my original post):

47
71
103
957
1583
1678
1793
1836
2046
2171

Please contact us at support@luminarymicro.com. Based on Friday’s data, we’ve added a few questions that should help us pinpoint what is going on:
0. What are the symptoms of your failure(s)?
1. How many Jaguars were powered up on the robot at time of failure?
2. How long had the robot been in operation when the failure occurred?
3. What sort of motor was being controlled? CIM? other?
4. Are the gear boxes coupled to one or two motors?
5. What was the power source? (Just in case it was not a 12V SLA battery)
6. What was the approximate condition of the battery? (fully charged, half, nearly empty)
7. How long since the last charge?
8. Was the battery isolated from the robot while it was being charged?
9. Other than the power source, motor and Servo PWM signal, are there any other connections to Jaguar?
10. Describe any other conditions leading up to the time when the unit failed.
11. Is there anything else notable about your robot?
12. What was the configuration of your coast/brake at time of failure?
13. Calibration: have you calibrated the Jaguar(s)?

Pictures of your setup are extremely useful, even if they are pictures taken by your phone. Please, send pictures!

Thanks again for answering our call for more information. We are continuing our efforts to identify root causes for the failures being reported. We will keep you updated with our findings.

Regards,
Scott

Team 2809 had 1 failure
 

We (team 2809) had a Jaguar controller fail while testing our robot. It worked fine for about 10 minutes, then suddenly stoppped working, accompanied by a slight burning smell. It does not work in either direction, and has a slow flashing red light (ie fault condition). The Jaguar was driving a CIM motor, connected to a gearbox, driving a shooter roller via chain. We carefully opened up the Jaguar to see if any metal shavings could have got in it, but there were none, and no visible sign of damage.

We also had another Jaguar missing the PWM connector, but I put one in and it works fine.

I have emailed all the requested data to Luminary and will provide pictures tomorrow. For now, we are using a Victor instead.

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

Something to keep in mind Scott when looking at the numbers of Jags sold vs. failures is that not all (in fact probably most) teams have not used theirs yet. Yes there are a few who are ahead of the game and are up and running around, and they are the teams reporting failures, but many many teams I'll bet have yet to power their robots.

For example my team purchased 10. Plus the 4 in the kit means we have 14. We've put about 1-2 hours worth of use on only 2 of those, but plan to wire the robot tonight so we'll have more hooked up by tomorrow.

Hopefully by the end of this week many more teams will be up and running and there will be more data to go by for determining the robustness of the jags.

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

We have been running ours for about a week with no problems yet *knocks on wood*.

I hope (and am confident) that Luminary Micro will get these issues resolved, because the Jaguar is otherwise a great improvement over the Victor when it comes to features and linearity.