New Black Jaguars?
 

I did some looking around and i discovered that Luminary Micro was bought out by Texas Instruments. With further research i found out that Texas Instruments is coming out with a new Black Jaguar (MLD-BDC24) seen at the bottom of this page.

Anyway my question is: does anyone know if we are going to be receiving these new (and in my opinion, much better looking) Jaguars in the 2011 KOP?

Re: New Black Jaguars?
 

If you search these forums you will find a bunch of information on this topic, including how to use them on your 2010 Robot.

However, you will not find whether or not Black Jags are in the 2011 KoP. FRCHQ likes to keep the KoP relatively secret, so no one outside of those walls really knows.

I sure hope they are, and speculation abounds!

Re: New Black Jaguars?
 

SO i guess this is a pointless forum :-\

Re: New Black Jaguars?
 

I have some good info that the other Jags (beige/brown or whatever you want to call them) are discontinued.

Edit: The black Jags are the replacement. (As far as I know.)

Re: New Black Jaguars?
 

What's cool about the black Jaguars is not that they're black, but rather, they provide a bridge between RS232 and CAN.

I'd be surprised if the grey Jaguars are discontinued without a direct replacement. Grey Jaguars allow the CAN bus to be daisy-chained throughout the Jaguars in the robot. The black Jaguar connects to the cRIO, the remaining (grey) Jaguars are connected in series via RJ11 4-wire patch cables. I think we'll see many more teams implementing CAN in their future robots.

Re: New Black Jaguars?
 

I guess SO, if you don't want any info about those black Jags.

But if you do, and you had used the search feature (hint: it's your best friend), you'd know what we have known for months.

FIRST is not Chief Delphi, and vice versa, so what we know is not what FIRST might know. Here, when we speculate (= don't "know") we label it as speculation.

Re: New Black Jaguars?
 

Im sort of new to Chief Delphi and the whole forum thing in general (most of my internet time was spent on youtube.com and and deviantart.com). But I'm happy to report that, since posting this thread, I have discovered the search feature and we've become quite a pair. I was going to delete the thread after I realized that this discussion has been going on for a while now, but i decided not to since those threads were somewhat buried.

Re: New Black Jaguars?
 

We have two on our robot. We had four but two broke....or we just thought they broke. Either way, we have two black jags.

Re: New Black Jaguars?
 

how has that worked out for your team? or do u guys just use them as basic speed controllers?

Re: New Black Jaguars?
 

We use them the same way as we would use the tan jags.

And apparently they didnt break, we got metal shavings in them. We cleaned them out and they should work fine now. One powers up fine, but we havent tested the actual motor control yet.

Re: New Black Jaguars?
 

Oh okay, I see.

Re: New Black Jaguars?
 

As I stated above, the black Jags are not the same as grey Jags. If you use the CAN bus, you use a black Jag to connect to the cRIO via the RS232 serial line. (You can avoid the black Jag by using a 2CAN adapter between the cRIO ethernet port and a grey jag).

Metal shavings can spell death to robot speed controllers (Victors or Jaguars). Avoid drilling, grinding, filing on your robot with the electronics unprotected. It's really painful when you blow-up a speed controller just before a match. I know. :o

Re: New Black Jaguars?
 

During a match too. We tend to do quick drills without thinking...maybe if the electrical members paid more attention to us mechanical members and our tomfoolery, we wouldn't have that issue :P

Re: New Black Jaguars?
 

The Black Jaguars can also be daisy chained. The outer 2 pins of the Serial/CAN port go to the RS232 connector, but the inner 4 act the same as all other CAN ports.

Re: New Black Jaguars?
 

Thanks, I should have recalled that!

Re: New Black Jaguars?
 

Is anybody having the same Jag cooking issues we had last year (particularly with the Black Jags?

1075 cooked about 3 Jags in WAT this weekend, and 4 or 5 more during build.

We do try to be pretty careful about keeping the shavings out, but when making mods in the pits, it can be difficult so I won't say for sure that no shavings were deposited.

We lost two steering motor Jags (Denso Window motors, in a 2+2 Invertible Swerve). Perhaps its something to do with the motors? I know at least some of the ones we lost in build were on these same motors.

Re: New Black Jaguars?
 

The black jaguars are more robust and, from my humble point of view, have been doing well.

However, metal shavings are still a problem for all motor controllers, be they Victor or Jaguar.

Re: New Black Jaguars?
 

Vertical or (even better) upside down electrical boards seem to have a lot going for them these days...

Re: New Black Jaguars?
 

this thread talks about a similar problem. a bad motor could have been your problem

Re: New Black Jaguars?
 

this thread talks about burned out victors and such. a bad motor might be your problem.

Re: New Black Jaguars?
 

Jaguars mounted back to back vertically provide some pretty interesting space optimization results. Also, bent Lexan covers (with slots drilled in the appropriate places) could be an interesting side project for protecting the Jaguars. We usually use a T-shirt, but I'm not too sure how effective that is.

Re: New Black Jaguars?
 

Please don't :). It's hard enough to troubleshoot without having any status lights to guide the field troubleshooters...

P.S. We had one team dead for two matches, because I couldn't see the blinking status lights on their upside-down Jaguars. Their PWM cables were plugged in backwards (field fault :) ).

Re: New Black Jaguars?
 

not only for jaguars but the entire electronics board. i'm gonna see if i can convince the programmers/electrical guy to do something like this next year. i've been looking around on the web and Plexiglas is pretty easy to manipulate with a heat gun, some sort of mold, and some patience. they even sell solvents to bond the Plexiglas to itself to act as a glue

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via FoxyTunes

Re: New Black Jaguars?
 

1583 has seven jags on our robot, four of which are black. Last year and this year we've had some issues with the tan ones but no issues with the black . Saying that I hope they continue to perform well until after April 17th.

Re: New Black Jaguars?
 

the motor could be bad. this thread discusses it.

Re: New Black Jaguars?
 

wait a sec... how can u afford to keep buyin jags?!

Re: New Black Jaguars?
 

The black jags were cheaper than even the on sale victors.

Re: New Black Jaguars?
 

You can RMA the broken ones