Victor 888 vs Jaguar for rookie drive train

[Maximillian]

I am the member of a small rookie team. We have about 10 kids on the team. We have decided to go with the Simbotics Kitbot on Steroids for our drive base.

My question is should we use the Victor 888 or Jaguars for our motor controllers?

We get 2 Victors and one Jaguar in our kit of parts. Then we get two more of each with the IFI PDV. If we use Victors we dont have to buy any for our drive train. But if we use Jaguars we have to buy one more controller for the robot.

Sorry if this has already been answered. From what I have read there is no use to the Jaguars unless you use CAN. Due to use being a rookie team I doubt we will end up using CAN anyways so there will be no use for that.


Thanks for the help.

[R.C.]

Your better off going with Victor 888s. They are very reliable and easy to use.

[brennonbrimhall]

Originally Posted by Maximillian

We have decided to go with the Simbotics Kitbot on Steroids for our drive base.

Good choice.

Originally Posted by Maximillian

My question is should we use the Victor 888 or Jaguars for our motor controllers?

We get 2 Victors and one Jaguar in our kit of parts. Then we get two more of each with the IFI PDV. If we use Victors we dont have to buy any for our drive train. But if we use Jaguars we have to buy one more controller for the robot.

Originally Posted by R.C.

Your better off going with Victor 888s. They are very reliable and easy to use.

I'd hesitate to say one is "best," because they are different products with different feature sets. Which one is better for you depends on what you're looking for in your motor controllers. (Though I agree with R.C.; Victors would probably be a better choice for your rookie team, and most rookies in general.) Some questions to consider for your team:

• Are you planning on using CANBus or PWM control? (Jaguars can do CANBus or PWM, Victor can only do PWM. Sounds like you're not planning on CAN, and I'd say that's another good choice.)
• How much is reliability a concern for you? (Victors are considered to be more reliable than the Jaguars, generally speaking.)
• Is physical size of the controller a concern for you? (Victors are smaller than Jaguars.)
• How much of a concern is cost for your team? (Victors are $10 cheaper than Jaguars, should you need spares/extra.)

[Maximillian]

Are you planning on using CANBus or PWM control?

PWM control. We are trying to keep things simple

How much is reliability a concern for you?

It is a very big concern. We are operating on a fairly low budget and also dont want to have to deal with things breaking alot.

Is physical size of the controller a concern for you?

not really.

How much of a concern is cost for your team?

The difference in price of $10 is less of a concern than the fact that we have to buy one Jaguar when we dont have to buy any Victors. I would be more concerned with the reliability of each.

[brennonbrimhall]

Originally Posted by Maximillian

PWM control. We are trying to keep things simple



It is a very big concern. We are operating on a fairly low budget and also dont want to have to deal with things breaking alot.



not really.



The difference in price of $10 is less of a concern than the fact that we have to buy one Jaguar when we dont have to buy any Victors. I would be more concerned with the reliability of each.

Based on your responses, it seems like the Victor is a better option for you and your team.

[KrazyCarl92]

Originally Posted by Maximillian

I am the member of a small rookie team. We have about 10 kids on the team. We have decided to go with the Simbotics Kitbot on Steroids for our drive base.

My question is should we use the Victor 888 or Jaguars for our motor controllers?

We get 2 Victors and one Jaguar in our kit of parts. Then we get two more of each with the IFI PDV. If we use Victors we dont have to buy any for our drive train. But if we use Jaguars we have to buy one more controller for the robot.

Sorry if this has already been answered. From what I have read there is no use to the Jaguars unless you use CAN. Due to use being a rookie team I doubt we will end up using CAN anyways so there will be no use for that.


Thanks for the help.

It seems like there might be a couple misperceptions here. The Kitbot on Steroids was developed with the 2011 kitbot in mind. Since then, the rules restricting robot size have changed (robots are smaller now). Also, the kitbot will be quite different this year from previous years (as per the FRC blog). Most of these changes are for the better, but it does mean that the Kitbot on Steroids isn't necessarily legal for this season and it's features may not directly apply to this years kitbot. However, many of the concepts in KBoS, like the electronics board and changes with the wheels can still likely be adapted to this year's kitbot to help you improve your drive base. It's awesome that you are looking to Kitbot on Steroids for inspiration, just want to make sure you're aware that the exact design isn't necessarily legal for this season.

As for jaguars vs. victors, I agree with RC and Brennon that victor 888's will be the more reliable option for you. However, it's not that there is 'no use' in using jaguars if you don't use CAN. Jaguars will also work on PWM, but they are heavier, have a larger footprint, and are less robust than victors. So the jaguar you get in the kit isn't 'no use' because you choose not to use CAN (I support this choice by the way), but I would suggest that any additional motor controllers you get be victor 888's or talons.

[Maximillian]

Originally Posted by brennonbrimhall

Good choice.





I'd hesitate to say one is "best," because they are different products with different feature sets. Which one is better for you depends on what you're looking for in your motor controllers. (Though I agree with R.C.; Victors would probably be a better choice for your rookie team, and most rookies in general.) Some questions to consider for your team:

• Are you planning on using CANBus or PWM control? (Jaguars can do CANBus or PWM, Victor can only do PWM. Sounds like you're not planning on CAN, and I'd say that's another good choice.)
• How much is reliability a concern for you? (Victors are considered to be more reliable than the Jaguars, generally speaking.)
• Is physical size of the controller a concern for you? (Victors are smaller than Jaguars.)
• How much of a concern is cost for your team? (Victors are $10 cheaper than Jaguars, should you need spares/extra.)

Originally Posted by KrazyCarl92

It seems like there might be a couple misperceptions here. The Kitbot on Steroids was developed with the 2011 kitbot in mind. Since then, the rules restricting robot size have changed (robots are smaller now). Also, the kitbot will be quite different this year from previous years (as per the FRC blog). Most of these changes are for the better, but it does mean that the Kitbot on Steroids isn't necessarily legal for this season and it's features may not directly apply to this years kitbot. However, many of the concepts in KBoS, like the electronics board and changes with the wheels can still likely be adapted to this year's kitbot to help you improve your drive base. It's awesome that you are looking to Kitbot on Steroids for inspiration, just want to make sure you're aware that the exact design isn't necessarily legal for this season.

As for jaguars vs. victors, I agree with RC and Brennon that victor 888's will be the more reliable option for you. However, it's not that there is 'no use' in using jaguars if you don't use CAN. Jaguars will also work on PWM, but they are heavier, have a larger footprint, and are less robust than victors. So the jaguar you get in the kit isn't 'no use' because you choose not to use CAN (I support this choice by the way), but I would suggest that any additional motor controllers you get be victor 888's or talons.

We are aware that the rules according to size will change. We are just using the basic principals of the kitbot on steroids, the wheels, chain drive and 4 motors, in our build. We will adapt those ideas into whatever size there will be for the 2014 season.

As of the motor controllers I am aware that Jaguars can use PWM. We have a loaner bot that we are messing around with and that has 4 Jaguars on it. I was trying to say that one of the main advantages of Jaguars was that you could use CAN, and because we arent doing that it would be logical to use the lighter and smaller Victors.

[nicholsjj]

Keep in mind that any assuming of what the rules will be will only make an..well you know. As a rookie team make sure that the first thing you all do after the kickoff and extra videos are over is to . Yes three times is the charm as far as day one is concerned then many more rereads need to be in order.
As far as the motor controllers go I would recommend the 888s. They are very reliable and from our team's past experience they have been more robust than the jags. Some examples of this would be PWM's falling out on jags and not 888's as well as exposure to metal shavings and overheating have occurred more often to our jags. The only problem our team ever had with the 888's was when we didn't set the PWM cable into the port correctly.

[yash101]

As Brennon pointed out, you may like the victors. They are a great choice. However, if you get good funding (because you are a rookie team), you may want to give talons a try. It works exactly the same as victors (even the wiring) but is sealed, so you won't have to worry as much as debris getting inside the holes, damaging the controller

I think that victors are the best for rookies because PWM is a very easy-to-use motor communications protocol. You probably will have access to only one cRIO, so the team will be cramped trying to use it for educational purposes. With PWM, you could easily use an Arduino or Propeller, etc. That way, you could prototype an application by yourself while another person can be using the cRIO or another controller.

I really like how easy it is to use PWM. However, this would be one-sided because I haven't played much with CAN!

However, if I am not wrong (and please correct me if I am), you can have more motor controllers on the CAN but than you can have PWM connections. That will allow you to have more complex mechanisms! There is the problem that it is hard to get enough Digital I/O pins.
"Pins, pins and pins...what microcontrollers need more of"

Check out this thread

[magnets]

Originally Posted by yash101

However, if I am not wrong (and please correct me if I am), you can have more motor controllers on the CAN but than you can have PWM connections. That will allow you to have more complex mechanisms! There is the problem that it is hard to get enough Digital I/O pins.
"Pins, pins and pins...what microcontrollers need more of"

This is true, but you can have 20 different PWM outputs. No team will need 20 different outputs, so number of outputs isn't really an issue.

Having lots of speed controllers is nice. Last year, we had 4 on drive, 1 shooter, one for climber deployment, and three for the climber for a total of eight.

[brennonbrimhall]

Originally Posted by yash101

However, if I am not wrong (and please correct me if I am), you can have more motor controllers on the CAN but than you can have PWM connections. That will allow you to have more complex mechanisms! There is the problem that it is hard to get enough Digital I/O pins.
"Pins, pins and pins...what microcontrollers need more of"

Originally Posted by magnets

This is true, but you can have 20 different PWM outputs. No team will need 20 different outputs, so number of outputs isn't really an issue.

I'm pretty sure I count only 10 PWM outputs on the Digital Sidecar. Therefore, I'm assuming you're referring to using two digital modules and two sidecars.

If you use the default setup, i.e. where a Black Jaguar is used as a Serial to CAN bridge, you max out at 16 CAN nodes (though multiple teams have posted that they had comm issues at 12 to 14 nodes). I'm unsure of the maximum for a 2CAN setup, but I believe that it should be higher.

Therefore, the protocol that can handle more nodes it is dependent on how many digital modules and sidecars you use (which in turn is partially based off of your model of cRIO -- the older model had more slots available).

All of this being said, I tend to agree with magnets; the number of nodes you can control with either protocol is really not a factor in deciding what protocol a team will implement on their robot. And this is all completely tangential to the OP's question, to which it sounds like they'd rather use Victors.

[yash101]

That is true. However, when you have small things like servos and pneumatics (don't they use PWM?), you will get quite cramped. I think we may have maxed out on our PWM capabilities. We didn't want to do something funky like multiple DSes. But I guess that's what happens when you want too many functions in a robot (Good shooter [until it broke] and a reliable climbing mechanism)

[brennonbrimhall]

Originally Posted by yash101

That is true. However, when you have small things like servos and pneumatics (don't they use PWM?), you will get quite cramped. I think we may have maxed out on our PWM capabilities.

Servos do take up one of your PWM ports. You also need to install a jumper to ensure correct voltage.

Pneumatics are not typically controlled via Digital Sidecar (though you can control them with relays). Teams generally use the Solenoid Breakout.

Relays don't physically use the PWM ports on the DS. You can see in the picture that there 8 sets of relay pins below the PWM ports and in between the I2C port and Digital IO ports.

But let's not hijack this thread; let's get back to answering the OP's question, not answering various side questions about how many PWM connections you can make or how cramped the DS gets. That's the subject of a different thread.

[Ether]

Originally Posted by nicholsjj

Some examples of this would be PWM's falling out on jags...

Even with the PWM cable properly secured in the cable retainer??

as well as exposure to metal shavings

My understanding is that the VEX Jag PCBs are are conformally coated.

[geomapguy]

I've always been a fan of Jaguars due to easy for rookies to use (not calibration, easy to stick the pwm cables in). Just my $.02