[Jon Stratis]

Originally Posted by s1900ahon

All motor controllers have basically the same structure. This applies to Jaguars, Talons, Victors, and even the VEX Motor Controller 29s. Each has a small microcontroller, a motor interface, and some way of communicating with it. The microcontroller is a system-on-a-chip (SoC) that contains a CPU, memory (flash and SRAM), timers, etc.

In the case of Jaguar, the microcontroller contains a CAN interface that is capable of receiving packets (messages) sent by the cRIO that contain commands. The software takes the packets and interprets them. So there is no specific hardware (logic gates) that are specifically wired together to do the PID, it is just software.

This is incorrect. See chapter 7 in the Jaguar guide: http://content.vexrobotics.com/docs/...e_20130215.pdf

A network-controlled Jaguar supports several types of closed-loop control through an internal PID controller.
• Constant-current control
• Position control using an encoder
• Position control using a potentiometer
• Speed control

The Jaguar will accept position, speed or current values over the CAN network, and then utilizes its own internal PID controller to hit the desired target.