how many people have had failing jaguars
 

I need to know so to make a decision on whether or not to use them. I've read atleast two people had them burnout.:confused:

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

My team killed ours by wiring them improperly. So, try to avoid doing that if you use them.

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

Im not sure what we did to ours, but they weren't working properly. We couldn't go backward, and all the wiring was working perfectly before.

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

Ours still work fine.

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

Haven't had a problem with them yet! They're much better than the Victors were for the past few years; the robot is much more controllable.

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

Jaguars do make driving your robot much more controllable at low speeds. This also could be due to the joysticks are more precise than analog joysticks.

One thing to remember is that the Jaguar size is twice as large than a victor footprint. If price is important , Jags are half the price of victors.

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

They have been working great here so far

The limit switch jumper isn't missing from the backward limit pin is it?

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

Our Jaguars are working fine still, no issues. Seem more controlled at low speeds than Victors were.

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

We currently have 10 jaguars and have been running most of them for the last 2 months.

We had 1 jaguar that shipped without the PWM connector, and one that was missing a limit switch jumper. We RMAd the first one (painless) and added the jumper to the second. Other then those two manufacturing defects, we have had no failures.

Re: just wondering
 

I asked because I've read that several people have had them burn out>

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

Our team was running the benchtop setup, but one motor wasn't working right. It was reversed, as indicated by the LED on the Jaguar. When we swapped out that Jaguar, it worked fine. Then, later in testing (still with the benchtop setup), both motors stopped responding and we smelled burning. Both Jaguars were destroyed at about the same time, after running fine for a little while. For now, we are using Victors.

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

we just got ours on our new robot and they work fine.....although thier alot bigger:(

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

This seemed like a good place to post this:

Make sure you start here: http://www.luminarymicro.com/jaguar

If you are still stumped, remember that you can contact our applications engineers (directly) at support@luminarymicro.com. Make sure you provide our engineers as much information as possible to be able to support you.

Regards,
Scott

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

Our team wired the jaguar backwards, and naturally a puff of smoke was emmitted. My question was, will replacing the 3300 microfarad capacitor fix it, or did many circuits in the jaguar get burned out

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

Today we accidentally shorted a motor connected to a jaguar. There was a burning smell and now the jaguar only works in one direction. Is is done or is there a way to fix it?

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

Unless the capacitor is the only device damaged repairing a motor controller is not something that is recommended. For one, most things are surface mounted and so soldering and desoldering require advanced skills and tools.

I'd be surprised if the bus cap is the dead device.

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

We lost one after running about four hours. It would only run in one direction and lost the coast function.

No short circuits. No metal chips. No wiring errors. No bad motors. No explanation.

We are watching the Jaguars closely.

Mr. Bill

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

Same problems here. We called Luminary about it and they gave us the address to send the failed one too. We're getting a new one but we also bought 6 new Vics right then and there. Don't trust the Jags just yet.

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

We lost another Jaguar. Again will only go in one direction, but we kept the coast feature this time. We are only running four of them on our test/practice chassis and although they are driving Cims, we are not pushing them that hard.

A 50% failure rate is excessive.

Here's hoping all our opponents are running Jaguars.

Mr. Bill

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

Not that we were planning on using them in the first place, but hearing this confirms my fears.

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

2046 has had 1 Jaguar fail in the same fashion. Has there been any indication from the vendor of warranty coverage for this?

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

My team had four jaguars fail in the same day. two we got working again with some solder, but the others are being replaced by luminary micro.

We're now switching to victors.

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

We just had one fail the same way (lost forward power). Going to RMA it, but we'll probably use Victors on the robot. It's a shame because the Jaguars are much smoother.

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

Team 188 had two Jaguars fail in the exact same manner this past weekend. They now only operate in one direction.

One failed after about 2 hours of operation on the right side of our drivetrain, and the other failed on the left side of our drivetrain after 4 hours of operation. This happend while we were doing our driver tryouts - we were driving them for prolonged periods of time.

The fact that both sides of the drivetrain failed left us with the uneasy feeling that it was only a matter of time the rest would fail.

We are keeping a close eye on our remaining two Jaguars.

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

Ours don't work anymore. Back to good old victors.

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

Woot, new victors came in today ^_^

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

Has there been an official Luminary Micro statement about Jaguar failures?
Are there ways to avoid failing Jaguars?

Most rookie teams don't have the funds to switch to victors, so hopefully we can give them advice on how to use the Jaguars safely.

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

Hello,

Scott again from Luminary Micro. As you know, forums are a great place for FRC teams to post issues and questions. This thread seems to be the highest concentration of concern for Jaguars in the FRC community at the moment and (therefore) the best place to (a) provide some information that should bolster your confidence in Jaguar, (b) ask for your help, and (c) commit (again) to you that Luminary Micro is dedicated to the success of FIRST and the FIRST community.

As you know, the rules allow you to choose the motor controller you want to use: either a Jaguar or a Victor. That said, and in the spirit of GP, we’d like to share some of our data with you. We are closely tracking the use of Jaguar modules, because we want your experience to be nothing short of phenomenal. The numbers say most of you are being very successful, but we are concerned about some reports of “stopped working” and “only works in reverse”.

To date, we have shipped 13,019 Jaguar modules, and we have issued RMAs and replaced 26 Jaguar modules for teams who have contacted us regarding failures, which is a 0.2% failure rate.

For the 26 failures we’ve replaced, here is a pareto of the complaints:
• DOA – 1
• PWM function – 1
• PWM missing – 3
• Neutral LED – 3
• Reverse only – 4
• Stopped working – 6
• No voltage on output – 4
• Other – 4

For the 9 returned failures that we’ve analyzed, here is a pareto of the analysis:
• Flash not programmed – 1
• Customer-induced EOS – 1
• Gate driver U6 failed – 4
• 15V regulator failed – 1
• Missing PWM connector – 2

We wouldn’t expect a Jaguar module to function if it is misused – for instance, if the power supply or motor is hooked up backward, or if the battery is recharged while the Jaguar is still attached. Victor modules don’t function when misused in these ways either.

One of the biggest challenges we’re facing in analyzing the 26 failures that we have received is getting good engineering information about how the Jaguars were being used in the team’s robot. We *love* pictures – they’re worth much more than 1000 words. In addition, as soon as we issue an RMA for a team experiencing failures, we immediately ship a replacement module so that they can get back to work. We’re seeing delays in getting the failed units back, as to date we have received only 9 of the 26 units for which RMAs were issued.

We haven’t been precise about getting team numbers for the RMAs that we have issued, so we may have heard from some of you under your school or club name. If not, this thread mentions a number of failures that we haven’t heard about:
• Team 71: 2 Jaguars
• Team 2046: 1 Jaguar
• Team 2040: 1 Jaguar
• Team 188: 2 Jaguars
• Team 1245: ?4? Jaguars
• Team 103: ?4? Jaguars
• Team 957: 2 Jaguars
We’d love to talk to you about what happened, and if you didn’t misuse the modules, we’d be happy to replace them and get your failures back in our factory for analysis.

Here’s the information that we’d love to get from anyone who is having trouble with their Jaguars:
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?

For technical issues including RMA requests for the Jaguar modules, you can reach us at support@luminarymicro.com . If you’re having any problems, and you haven’t talked to us yet, please give us a try. We want you to be successful and have a great competition experience!

Regards,
Scott

http://www.luminarymicro.com/jaguar

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

One of our Jags released its 'magic smoke' yesterday. It was under a very lite load. I like the smoothness of the Jags but if they're going to be this sensitive we'll not be using them.

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

Scott Emley again (from the Luminary Micro factory in Austin, TX) --

Thanks to Michelle Celio for clearing my lengthy response (from last night) for posting on this thread -- and sorting out my four attempts to get you the contextual information!

If you haven't seen my post yet, please look back two or three......

Regards,
Scott

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

Wildstang apparently lost one yesterday as well. Same failure case as Beatty and others - only 1 direction works. After a few minutes of making fun of software for having bugs (:yikes:) we realized the Jaguar LED was lighting up but the motor was not moving. It was at the end of the meeting so we didn't do much more, but we'll be pulling it off the robot at the next meeting to do some bench tests to confirm our diagnosis.

As for how we've used it, it was freshly installed on our never-been-driven prototype and was not working the very first time we used it. We think it may have been used on a prototype drivetrain we built in December, but we had only used that prototype lightly - certainly never putting it under any serious strain.

We already distrusted the Jaguars enough based on what we've heard here that we weren't planning on using them on the drive wheels, but we thought we'd give them a shot for use in some lower-current situations. If we confirm that this incident is definitely a Jaguar failure we'll almost certainly avoid using them this year. No RMA policy can make up for the loss of an important match.

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

I'd like to take this opportunity to remind teams that the development engineers absolutely must have all failure mode data available in order to do their jobs well.

Scott quoted a 0.2% failure rate, which is acceptable by my standards considering the RMA policy. What he can't quote or analyze is unreported failures. Each unreported failure represents a disconnect in our community, because the people who create and the people who use see two different data sets.

For example, it is possible that 50% of my analog breakouts are going up in smoke, but teams aren't reporting it because they simply use the other one. If this is the case (unlikely), we need to know it so we can fix it.

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

It's dangerous to look at this issue from a purely statistical point of view. First of all, there's a very, very good chance that the majority of those 13,000 Jaguars shipped have not yet been used. Many teams do not have a robot up and running for practice in week 4 yet. Many other teams (like 1114, apparently) are avoiding them in the first place. When I hear teams like 71, 188, 11, and others all rattle off the same problem, I can see that there's an issue. It would be very foolish for FIRST or LM to ignore the anecdotal evidence that is cropping up, as while the numbers now are small, it very well could be an early indicator of a larger issue.

{edit} I should say I don't have any reason to believe that FIRST and/or LM is ignoring this issue... but I do get concerned when I hear statements to the effect of "The failure rate is acceptable" since that suggests that it might not be taken seriously. {/edit}

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

ours have not given us any problems much better than the victors

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

My purpose of actively posting is to attempt to retrieve useful information from those "anecdotally" (to use your parlance :) ) reporting failures on this forum... as the small percentage of returns AND the fact that we cannot reproduce any failures even after repeated vicious testing is not getting us any closer to understanding a root cause.

Our engineers are literally begging me for more information from you guys (again, see my previous post on questions we are interested in), and I hope that anyone who has worked with us feels that we are quite responsive and easy to work with. Please help us to help the community. support@luminarymicro.com

Regards,
Scott

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

1075 Immediately put our 4 Jags to use in a proto-bot we built in december with our old drive units. 4 cims, 2 each side into AM Supershifters, and they haven't seemed to give us any problems, except when theres a low battery they seem to have some sort of overload protection where the motor will just give up trying if it can't seem to move with the power its given. I suspect this is a feature, rather than a problem. They've probably got 4 or 5 hours of run time on them, and no issues yet...

Those teams with dead ones, get em to LM so they can figure out why, so that we dont have mass Jaguar failure come week 1.

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

For all we know all the ones that broke could have been dropped on the ground, hit with a hammer a few times, and thrown out the window. And do not get me started on my friend of a friend who see ghosts. Acting on anecdotal evidence is usually not a very good idea.

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

We thought we had a problem with a Jaguar last night, our shooter motor was running at only half speed. Turns out it was a programming problem, it was programmed to use a Victor instead of a Jaguar.

No hardware problems yet, we should be putting them to a ggood test over the next two weeks.

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

Guys, Please ... A vendor (Luminary Micro) has asked us (The FIRST teams) to assist in collecting data so that they may resolve a potential issue with their product (Jaguars).

We, in FIRST, have a massive engineering group that should be able to help out, so that those within our group that do not have access to this information will be protected.

Please, if you have a failure, let LM know. Give them all the information they've asked for, and more. Maybe your bit of 'anecdotal' information gives them the key to fixing whatever may be wrong with the Jaguars. We need to do this now so that week 1 will not have a bunch of rookies with robots that don't run ... and they will not know why.

This is what GP is all about. Helping without being asked ... because it is right to do so.

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

Wow... so you think Bill Beatty and his team smashed their Jaguars with a hammer? Sorry... there's people posting about problems in this thread that I consider trustworthy. They've been in FIRST a long time and know how to properly handle and wire up a speed controller. When Bill says they have 2 failures, I believe him and I know they didn't screw up on their end.

Daniel, I don't think anyone is advocating that we not provide info to LM. I'm just pointing out that saying the failure rate is only 0.2% and "that kind of failure rate is acceptable to me" don't give me a warm fuzzy feeling. That's a personal opinion - everyone else is free to think whatever they wish.

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

Yeah, I highly doubt 71, 188, 11, and 111 were careless with their Jags. When several of the most respected, storied teams in FIRST are saying they're having problems, the likelihood is that many more less-well-known teams are having problems too.

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

The acceptability of that 0.2% number was not given by utlinebacker of Luminary Micro, it was given by EricVanWyk (utlinebacker just gave us the data, which I consider exceptionally good and open for a vendor). From a manufacturing standpoint 0.2% is 2KP/M and while that isn't good it is acceptable from a purely manufacturing point of view.

I'll be honest, my biggest concern is NOT that there might be an issue with the Jaguars. My biggest concern IS if there is a problem with the Jaguars that we don't get to the bottom of this quickly enough so that LM can have a 'fix' ready by the week 1 regionals, and we'll have a number of rookie teams dead on the field. Remember that we, as veterans, have access to a lot of information (like CD) that rookies do not know exist, therefore, I believe it is our duty to the community to make sure that issues like this get resolved before week 1.

So, please everyone, give LM all the information they are asking for and then some. Let them know your battery level, how much current the motor was drawing, whether you had an ESD event (and how long after it failed), etc, etc.

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

No electrical problems i think, but 2 of our gearbox's got jammed and now we cant test our drive system until Saturday =[

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

I can't believe hyperbole was lost on you. I did try to make it a bit obvious with the whole throw it out the window bit. The point still stands though. Unless Bill Beatty sleeps with his speed controllers there is no way for sure to know that there was not accidental damage. I tend to rely on science which means not relying on anecdotal evidence which means that you should send them your speed controllers as fast as possible.
Some ESD events that can cause damage are below the level of perception for humans.

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

We were impressed with the controllability of the Jaguars. We have been using 2 for the past several weeks with no problems. So far, the smooth control beats anything we saw with the victors.

Though we charge our batteries offline, I was unaware of the danger of charging them while connected to the control system.

I appreciate the lengthy post from utlinebacker. It's good to have direct contact with the vendor.:)

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.

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

Three of also failed :( (fortunately early on, so we could plan on victors.) They failed with a very faint burning smell. We never ran the last one (I don't think.) They worked fine for a few minutes, then stopped altogether. I was messaged by utlinebacker, and I sent it to our head mentor. It was during the benchtop test. We will probably sort out the 14 questions tonight. I really want to use them (after this year), so I hope someone finds the problem.

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

Kudos to Luminary Micro. We got a replacement Jaguar just two day after we told them about our problem. That's exceptional customer support. We like the Jaguars better than the Victors and even though we've had one Jaguar fail we're going to stick with them on the drive motors

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

one of ours burned. we found the problem was in the manufacturing. one of the connections at the bottom of the board was bad

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

All four of ours failed, for no apparent reason, and when we replaced them with the victors, everything was working fine. Before they fried, we had the jaguars doing all sorts of funky things like making strange sounds when we first got them, and running the motors at different speed when they read the same speed. We've decided we're sticking with the Victors rather than buying new jaguars.

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

One of ours smoked tonight, very faint smell, now only works in one direction.

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

I find this more likely attributable to user error, than a manufacturing defect that all four of your teams Jags were defective and making strange sounds and running the motors erratically out of the box. I'm willing to be wrong here, just sounds unlikely to me. Make sure you get them to LM for RMA.

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

Team 449 had one jaguar fail a week or two ago. Same problem many are reporting- one direction stopped working (didn't bother to check for burning smell.) However, we kept running it to try and make it work (blaming the programmers) and eventually managed to burn out the other direction. [Spoiler alert!] It was on a CIM in an application that, in order to fire, required it to run the CIM at full power for a few microseconds, then run it slowly in reverse. It never stalled, but this application is almost worse than stalling it (zero to full forward to backwards very quickly.) It was the only Jaguar connected at that time, and was properly wired through fuses and such.

We really needed the fine control of a Jaguar, so we replaced it with one. We are using 8 others on the robot, and none of them have burned out since that first incident. We have fired the offending CIM in the exact same application countless (well maybe 100) times since, and the Jaguar seems fine. I haven't filed a report with LM yet, but plan on doing so in the near future. I hesitated before because some of our electronics team ripped it open to look at the insides (nothing was out of place or burnt.)

I'm not Luminary Micro, but if I had to analyze the failures I'd say that they are due to manufacturing defects and not user problems. Also, it seems that if they fail, they fail fairly early in usage (just a few hours.) For this reason I wouldn't discourage buying them, as long as you use them thoroughly and find that they are in good shape before bringing them to competition. Our team has had as many Victor failures as Jaguar failures (1). Then again, we've been using Victors for years. Hopefully LM can get this straightened out, but so far most Jaguars seem fine and robust-- it's just a small minority that aren't.

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

Fusion had their first Jaguar failure. It only runs the motor in reverse. We had a lot of hours on this Jaguar, and it failed unexpectedly. They're going to call LM Monday to get things sorted out. We replaced it with another Jag, and it's working fine.

Also, there's no chance of there being metal. This was on our Proto-bot, which is made of wood and the KOP chassis.

I will post the details later when I'm not falling asleep. If I forget, or if someone wants the information, PM me. I hopefully won't forget.

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

I hope that the jaguars work OK because we are planning on using them on our robot.

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

Thank you to the teams that have answered my call-to-action. Since my first lengthy request on this thread, we have heard from more teams and we’ve received more returns that might help us identify the root cause of issues that some of you are experiencing. I especially appreciate those of you that have answered my PM’s in my attempt to extract more information from you. Keep that communication coming!

Here is the (updated) status as of Friday evening, 2/6:

Since November, we have received 44 reported failures that we have immediately replaced. Here is a pareto of the complaints as reported:
• DOA:
-- Neutral LED – 5
-- PWM Missing – 3
-- PWM function – 6
• Reverse only – 11
• Forward only - 1
• No voltage on output – 4
• Incorrect output voltage - 3
• Stopped working – 6
• Other – 5

Of those 44 reported failures, 17 units have been returned to us. We have analyzed all the returned units, and here is a pareto of the analyses:
• Flash not programmed – 1
• Customer-induced EOS – 1
• Gate driver U6 failed – 8
• 5V regulator failed – 4
• Missing PWM connector – 3

While most teams still appear to be quite successful in using their Jaguars (44 failures represents a total of 0.3% of all Jaguars we have shipped for FRC 2009), I recognize that some audience members (a) might have been one of those affected by a failure, or (b) like me, might panic with word of ANY unexplained failures. While we are continuing to actively follow up with each affected team, we also commit to report any findings, conclusions, or prescribed courses of action back to the community.

My echoing reminder: If you have experienced a failure, PLEASE contact us at support@luminarymicro.com. When you do, PLEASE provide us as much information about your failure as possible (see my questions list here: http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...0&postcount=57 – and send us pictures of your system, which are exceptionally helpful for us in understanding your useage model). Finally, if you do receive an RMA replacement unit, PLEASE ship us the Jaguar that is giving you trouble. As you can see from above, we have still received less than 40% of all RMAs we have issued – which makes failure analysis quite challenging.

Regards,
Scott

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

we didn't actualy drive yet or use the victor's we'll probably know about this issue this week but our mentor wat telling us that victor's fail if debris falls in to them (Eg. someone drilling over them) this may be the issue at hand

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

Issue: Jaguar only outputs in the reverse direction.

1. How many Jaguars were powered up on the robot at time of failure?
A: 2

2. How long had the robot been in operation when the failure occurred?
A: Not sure. This one has been on since we received the control system in November without issue until Thursday night.

3. What sort of motor was being controlled? CIM? other?
A: CIM

4. Are the gear boxes coupled to one or two motors?
A: 1 Motor to 1 Tough Box

5. What was the power source? (Just in case it was not a 12V SLA battery)
A: A MK 12V battery.

6. What was the approximate condition of the battery? (fully charged, half, nearly empty)
A: Not sure... probably near full

7. How long since the last charge?
A: Not sure... probably the night before.

8. Was the battery isolated from the robot while it was being charged?
A: Yes, Team Fusion only charges the batteries off the robot.

9. Other than the power source, motor and Servo PWM signal, are there any other connections to Jaguar?
A: No, just the 12V power in, Motor output, and a PWM cable.

10. Describe any other conditions leading up to the time when the unit failed.
A: None that I know of. I believe they were just testing out some programming and it stopped working. No smoke, nothing. I inspected the unit, and did not see any physical damage.

11. Is there anything else notable about your robot?
A: It was a very basic kitbot with 2 wheels and a caster.

A new Jaguar was installed to replace the broken one, no other issues have been experienced.

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

We have lost 3 jags and are switching to Victors for now.

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

We had one fail over the weekend. It would only work in one direction. We used them on the practice bot with no problem, then when we put it on the competition bot it never worked properly. The other side has worked fine so far, and the one we replaced it with works too so far...

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

We've now run 13 Jaguars, many of them for 2 months, without a single failure.

One thing we have noticed (which should be obvious) is that it is much easier to activate the overcurrent protection if you have a loose wire. Every time we've thought we've had a problem, we've found a loose wire and fixing the wire makes the problem go away. Make sure ALL of your electrical wires are tight. A really drained battery also does this.

If you're having problems right out of the box, make sure the limit switch jumpers are installed.

One other piece of possibly useful information is that all of our Jaguars are on coast. I think the default is brake, so perhaps there is a problem with back EMF. That would probably be at least worthwhile data to collect.

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

Joe, are there any tricks or precautions to using the new power distribution panel, which may be important here?

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

All I can say is I LOVE the Jaguars, they're so much more efficient than the Victors. Our sister team (team 2881, the Lady Cans) accidentally flipped the input power wires to one of their jaguars and it released all of its magic smoke, and the capacitor was about to burst, so don't plug it in backward. But that's the only problem with them that we've had on either team. They were even fine when someone left a jumper on the PWM port going to one of them (the jumper that provides servo power to the middle pin). Nothing happened. I wouldn't suggest doing that, but they were okay.

The interesting part is that when they replaced that Jaguar with a Victor temporarily (and it was programmed as a Victor, so that wasn't wrong), that one CIM out of the four they were using for drive (holonomic) got really warm, while all of the others were very cool. That hadn't happened with the Jaguar. They're much more efficient, and their power curve is nearly perfectly linear, as apposed to the Victors, which have a sqaure-root power curve. I say use them.

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

One of ours just failed tonight. Worked for weeks then just stopped after cylcling the power for the programming. The fan constantly runs and when the PWM cable is plugged in it flashes a slow red. When you unplug the cable the cable or theres no code (labview) it flashes slow yellow. We had one other that came without the PWM connector but we fixed that.

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

Thank you (again) to the teams that have answered my call-to-action. We had some more units returned to us last week - nearly doubling the number of units that we are able to analyze. :) We've still only received about half of the units back that we have replaced - so if you are sitting on a failed unit that we've already sent you a replacement for, please send it back so we can perform FA.

Here is the (updated) status as of Friday (Feb 13th) evening:

Since November, we have received 62 reported failures that we have immediately replaced. Here is a pareto of the complaints:
• DOA:
- Neutral LED – 6
- PWM Missing – 3
- PWM function – 6
• Reverse only – 19
• Forward only - 1
• No voltage on output – 4
• Incorrect output voltage - 4
• Stopped working – 12
• Other – 7

Of those 62 reported failures, we have received 34 units back to us – which we have analyzed. Here is a pareto of the analyses:
• Flash not programmed – 2
• Customer-induced EOS – 2
• Gate driver U6 failed – 22
• 5V regulator failed – 2
• Missing PWM connector – 3
• Other – 3

While our engineering teams continue to analyze returned units and continue to attempt to recreate failures that some of you have witnessed, I’d like to point out a piece of feedback I received from the team. Apparently, a few units have been returned back to us with some visible swarf inside the enclosure. While the Jaguar's plastic enclosure is designed to largely protect the electronics from debris, the Jaguar is not immune to the risk of swarf entering the unit. I am certain every team’s mentors have reminded each teammate at least 15 times about how to properly operate a drill (i.e. wear eye protection, never drill above a Jaguar/Victor, never carry a freshly drilled metal apparatus across your electrical without properly dusting it off, etc). However, I’d like to offer yet another risk for swarf: Jaguar screw terminals.

We recommend using spade terminals to connect to the colored screw terminals on Jaguar. We colored the screws to make it easier to identify which terminal to connect which wire (see Getting Started Guide at http://www.luminarymicro.com/jaguar). That said… at least two problems surface when one unscrews one or more of the screw terminals (to attach wires with loop terminals, for instance). First, it’s easy to mistake which screw went to which terminal – and we’ve had some honest teams tell us about mix-ups occurring upon reattaching the screws (poof!). Second, (and the reason for my mention) the screw terminals were not designed for the screws to be removed completely. If the screw is removed completely, swarf could deposit from the screw and/or the screw terminal housing into the Jaguar.

So… we have not concluded anything definitive yet about the 62 reported failures, nor am I trying to cause panic for teams that did remove the screws completely at some point. This is just something our team thought to tell everyone ASAP when we noticed swarf in some returned units.

My echoing reminder: If you have experienced a failure, PLEASE contact us at support@luminarymicro.com. When you do, PLEASE provide us as much information about your failure as possible (see my questions list here: http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...0&postcount=57 – and send us pictures of your system, which are exceptionally helpful for us in understanding your use model). Finally, if you do receive an RMA replacement unit, PLEASE ship us the Jaguar that is giving you trouble. As you can see from above, we have still received only about half of all RMAs we have issued, and ideally, we’d like the opportunity to analyze every failed unit.

Good luck on your final days of the build season!

Regards,
Scott

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

We've had 2 Jaguars fail for no apparent reason. One of them functions in only one direction (although it lights up in both directions), and the other doesn't function in either direction (although again, the light functions in both directions). They are both in relatively low load, low use scenarios. The failure in one direction occurred with probably ~2 minutes of run time. The failure in both directions had a significantly longer run time, although it certainly doesn't exceed a few hours.

We're busy finishing the robot, but we'll email you with more information once the robot is crated up.

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

1/2 of ours (2) burned out during testing, quite literally, smoke and all.

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

Well, yesterday we had a Jaguar on our drivetrain fail. It only works in reverse now so for the time being we've swapped it out for one of the Jaguars controlling our shooter CIM's since it only needs to move in one direction anyway. I've already sent an e-mail to LM answering the questions that were posed in utlinebacker's post. I hope that the problems are solved since I really like the Jaguars.

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

We had one, but I think there were some metal shavings that got inside. So it's not product faulty, it was user error.

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

so we had one burn out on use today it was on our conveyor...

I am e-mailing luminary micro now...

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

192 has had 2 fail that I know of. I was there when the second one was changed out and had a student remove the cover. Inside we found small metal particles. They cover the electronics when they have to drill. We had a failure analysis meeting before starting the robot and one student mentioned the dirt on the moon rocks could be falling down on the jaguars. A plastic dust shield has been installed and the robot has run 20+ hours since then. I have not been informed of any problems since.

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

To clarify more, we have had 2 jaguar failures so far. The first one, which Zach had reference, is assumed to be a user error with metal shavings, but I'm not quite sure it's just that. Upon opening it, the only bad part looked like the capacitor, so we tried to replace that, but that does not fix the problem. After powering back up with a new cap, smoke emitted from the smd chip at U6 on the silkscreen...

As for the 2nd jaguar failure, this one had the same symptom as mentioned in posts above...it would not go in reverse, forward only. Upon opening this Jaguar There was visible signs of one of the FETs overheating by the sign of melted plastic around it. Since the other jaguar was unrepairable, I had taken off one of the FETs and put it on the burnt out FET. To this day there has been no problems with that specific jaguar, and it functions correctly now.

Hopefully those clarifications can assist in diagnosing the problem.

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

We haven't had any break yet, but we sometimes get a flashing red light (fault condition, perhaps current overload) and the jaguars don't work for about 3 seconds.

We have never had this happen with victors on any of our past robots, and since these are on our drive, we don't want this to happen, and we plan to swap them out with victors.

We aren't jamming the joysticks at full forwards and then suddenly full reverse.

I was wondering if anyone else has had similar issues.

Thanks!

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

We have been running practice bots and driving for the full 6 week build period without a single Jaguar failure. We are planning on using Jaguars on our the drive system for the increased linearity.

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

612 is actually using 8 Jaguars and no Victors. Surprisingly we have had problems communicating with the Victors through the new system so we completely stopped using them. But after reading this thread we have made sure to have spares on hand. But as far as programming for our drive system, we are enjoying the new features.

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

we did unluckily before shipping but it's a lot better than at competition !

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

2809, had 2/4 failed Jaguars in our testing... not a good track record so far. We sent both back to the company so they can determine the issues with the Jaguars, I hope everyone who had one fail on them did the same.

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

ours was not going backwards nd we looked over everythin nd all the wires were fine then one of the jaguars started to smoke and almost caught on fire...jus becuase tht happened our team decided to stick with the vectors

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

If you are participating in a regional event this week, please look for us and say hi! We’d love to meet with you and learn about your experiences with Jaguar. We’ll attempt to drop by each team pit and introduce ourselves.

Regional Event:: Luminary Micro Advisor
Washington, DC:: Brian Kircher & Scott Emley
Cleveland, OH:: Dave Wilson
Manchester, NH:: Kyle Norman
Trenton, NJ:: Paul Jordan
Traverse City, MI:: Tom Fedorko
Oklahoma City, OK:: Scott McMahon
Kansas City, KS:: Joe Kroesche
Chicago, IL:: Bobby Bradford

Here is the weekly status as of Friday (Feb 20th) evening:

Since November, we have received 88 reported failures that we have immediately replaced. Here is a pareto of the complaints:
• DOA:
- Neutral LED – 7
- PWM Missing – 3
- PWM function – 10
• Reverse only – 32
• Forward only - 1
• No voltage on output – 6
• Incorrect output voltage - 4
• Stopped working – 17
• FET melted - 2
• Other – 6

Of those 88 reported failures, we have only received 42 units back to us (still less than half) – which we have analyzed. Here is a pareto of the analyses:
• Flash not programmed – 2
• Customer-induced EOS – 3
• Gate driver U6 failed – 29
• 5V regulator failed – 3
• Missing PWM connector – 3
• Other – 2

We’re hoping we’ll receive more failed units back now that the ship deadline has passed.

My echoing reminder: If you have experienced a failure, PLEASE contact us at support@luminarymicro.com. When you do, PLEASE provide us as much information about your failure as possible (see my questions list here: http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...0&postcount=57 – and send us pictures of your system, which are exceptionally helpful for us in understanding your use model). Finally, if you do receive an RMA replacement unit, PLEASE ship us the Jaguar that is giving you trouble. As you can see from above, we have still received only about half of all RMAs we have issued, and ideally, we’d like the opportunity to analyze every failed unit.

Good luck at regionals!

Regards,
Scott

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

That seems like a lot of Gate Driver failures. Is there a problem with a design or the quality of the components used?

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

We were going to use jaguars then all of a sudden one shorted out so we switched to victors and have had no problems at all.

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

We've been having quite a few problems with our jaguars for our drivebase. We had two coupled cim motors, and one motor's jaguar failed (we noticed the smell and the fact that one motor was hot while the other was cold). That was replaced a couple times, until we borrowed a jaguar that worked. Then the jaguar for the other motor seemed to have problems, though at least it didn't smell burnt. On the field, we noticed that our bot would start off fine, then begin to stop and start. It would get slower over time. We thought that it might be because the jaguar was getting too much current and then failing for a moment, causing the other jaguar to fail in return. We figured this caused a cycle of jaguars failing repeatedly, causing our robot to be slow when only one had failed, and stop completely when both had.

So we replaced them with victors. Last I heard, one of the victors had burnt out, possibly because it couldn't handle the current.

All our other jaguars and victors work perfectly. Our batteries were freshly charged, and I made sure that the pwms were in the right orientation.

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

A Jaguar failed on our machine today during the Oregon Regional semi-final.

Not happy.

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

Dang Madison, that sucks. Any suggestions on what to do in order to avoid jags from killing each other. BTW, totally random but today I volunteered and reffed at a FTC comp and daisy chaining speed controllers was pretty cool. Totally random but just like to bring the CAN feature up.:P

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

Sounds to me like your CIMs are drawing more than 40 AMPs. That will cause your snap action breaker to trip and then reset. Since it's a thermal driven device once it trips it will trip again quicker and stay tripped longer each time.

Re: how many people have had failing jaguars
 

Remember that when the Jaguar goes into fail mode, there is a three second delay after the failure point has been removed. It is unlikely that the field conditions this year can cause over current so it is likely something else. Improper transmission assembly, bad alignment on shafts, too much chain tension, loose hardware, etc.