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Unread 04-05-2012, 12:38
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dsirovica dsirovica is offline
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AKA: Dean Sirovica
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Re: TI and future Jaguars

I didn't discuss the details of your open source proposal with TI, just high-level.

I like your modular approach especially if the modules can find wider markets. But I wonder if we are slicing and dicing too much already. As you pointed out a modular approach is more expensive than an integrated one (everything else being equal).

I believe we could go the other way. That is a more flexible Jaguar. As we have seen in our technical analysis of the Jag (elsewhere on these posts), the power can easily be increased to 100A ++ just by adding another Mosfet per H-bridge leg, and setting different thresholds on the current sensing software. The BOM cost of that would be minimal. I was browsing through the 800 page Stellaris manual – that is a powerful and very well designed beast! It is made to run RTOS, abundant interrupt levels, it has an amazing brown-out hardware support – it seems the FIRST software image does not make much use of any of this. Therefore I believe one could make a Vic shaped Jag on steroids that would serve the 10A-150A market. And if it is just one SKU I believe the cost could be driven down to below $100. Further just like with the Vics and CRios, FIRST could obtain an additional discount for bona-fide FIRST users. But there must be other markets, and I would think there would be with such a flexible and robust unit. It will kill the Vic though.

On FIRSTs requirement of power control – why could that just be done by specifying the resettable fuse values for each type of motor? Then the judges would check that at inspection time.

Dean

Last edited by dsirovica : 04-05-2012 at 12:42.
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