I hate Jaguars!!!

[gustagoose]

We, 3172, have had significant issues with jaguars in our short existence. At Greater Kansas City Regional, early last March, we had two "blow-outs". We had a third "blow-out" during off-season community outreach, and a fourth during a test. With this fourth jaguar, we were not even enabled. We heard a quiet but very high pitched squeal emanating from the vicinity of the jaguar's 20 amp fuse. A slightly louder click sound pulsated through the, 14 gauge I believe, wire obviously connecting the jaguar with the main power board. We flipped the breaker, and turned it on again and got similar results. As a second year team, we simply don't have the funding to purchase jaguar after jaguar after jaguar. We have checked wire gauge, voltage, current, fuse, ground, connectors, etc. Nothing. Any advice or ideas would be splendid!

[Phalanx]

There definitely are arguments for both cases, however we are using a MIX of Jaguars(4) and Victors(4) this season. We are ONLY using the Victors due to space limitations otherwise they'd be Jaguars. Even that could have been avoided by better planing and design in the early stages.

Victors are a proven quantity with a solid track record. However, I fully expect them to do be disallowed in VERY the near future. Hence the migration to Jaguars and CAN.

Jaguars in their early stages (Gray/Brown) had some design flaws and some manufacturing defects, making them somewhat unreliable. That has been addressed with Texas Instruments purchase of Luminary Micro and the new BLACK Jaguars.

The Older Jaguars:
We have 4 Jaguars(Gray/Brown) running on a basic practice/test frame for 2 years, and they haven't failed yet.

I did have 1 Gray/Brown Jaguar fail with the typical meltdown of the Fairchild component when I attempted to use it this year. The other remaining Gray/Brown Jaguar is unused. As such, they are now all BLACK Jaguars.

The advantages to Jaguars and CAN are enormous compared to Victors & PWM besides being cheaper:

1) CAN wiring, is cleaner, easy to make with a standard teleco crimping tool, the plug in and don't fall out like PWM. CAN is also highly noise and interference resistant/tolerant unlike PWM.

2) Jaguars "built-in" support for Encoders, Potentiometers and Limit Switches and PID and software control of break/coast without additional wiring.

3) CAN Networking/Jaguar, you can...
a) Monitor the health and status of each device, it's voltage, it's temperature, the motors amp draw, etc...
b) You can program for Voltage Control, Current Control, Position Control and switch between them dynamically.
c) You can synchronize commands across multiple Jaguars.
d) List the goes on...

While, I'm not a huge fan of Jaguars due to their early history, I do see the future and benefits of them long term going forward.