Talons, Jaguars and Victors - where do you stand?

[Phalanx]

I voted for Talons, but, I must also add, you need to pick the right speed controller for the job.
I also like the Jaguars. The closed loop control is something that neither the Talon or Victor can do.

When it comes to PWM only controllers. I pick the talon hands down.
The "sealed" unit really does the job of preventing shavings from getting inside.
The linearity and performance is outstanding.

Great new speed controller, we used 8 of them this year.

[Clem1640]

We used Talons exclusively this year. 10 of them (and another 10 on our 2nd robot). We mounted small fans on each of there to supplement cooling. We've had zero failures to-date after two Mid-Atlantic district events and the Mid-Atlantic Championship; 36 qualifying matches, 18 elimination matches and a lot of practice later.

We've used mostly Jaguars (with a few Victors) in the past 4 robots. We do not use CAN.

By this point in the season, I would have expected to have toasted a few Jaguars. Not so with the Talons. (We did purchase a Talon last Fall and tortured it nearly to death).

The Talon PWM connector is more secure than either the Jaguar's or Victor's. No problems with loosing PWM connection either.

[Andrew Schreiber]

For the record, I've run exclusively Jaguars the last 2 years. They were on a CAN Network (which I agree, is terrible). I may have burned out one last year (I don't recall 100% so I'm allowing the possibility) but I haven't had any problems this year. So, that's roughly 20 jags (7 this year, 13 last year) with maybe one failure.

[Gary Dillard]

Anyone from CTRE or AndyMark want to chime in on availability of Talons to support this year's FRC season in a timely manner? We had committed to the Talon form factor and bought 8 of them up front, but when we went back for more and for spares they weren't available until APRIL, and we weren't willing to go into competition with zero spares so we ended up having to fit Jag's in a few places. I'm sure a lot of teams are like us and don't have an endless supply of funds available up front so we're not willing or capable to overstock ourselves just because a supplier can't maintain inventory. I'll give it to first year availability and being overwhelmed with the response, but I'd really like to hear that they (or AndyMark) have done something about it before I commit this year. It doesn't matter how good they are if you can't get them.

[BBray_T1296]

Originally Posted by MikeE

I'm not sure they are any less reliable than some lots of Digital Sidecars.
The DSC is also a single point of failure and disables all PWM controlled motors.

The only time I have ever seen a DSC fail was when a student ignorantly put 24VDC into it and created quite the light show.

[Jon Stratis]

Originally Posted by BBray_T1296

The only time I have ever seen a DSC fail was when a student ignorantly put 24VDC into it and created quite the light show.

I saw a few DSC's fail last year (including one on my team's robot!), likely due to metal shavings in all cases. In some cases, they came back after getting blown out, and it was just a small short on the 5V rail.

I've also seen the cable from the cRio to the DSC come out more times than I can count!

[cgmv123]

Originally Posted by Jon Stratis

I've also seen the cable from the cRio to the DSC come out more times than I can count!

Short 4-40 screws are well worth the investment!