Jaguars

[TogetherSword8]

I am unaware of any poll on motor controllers that would be FRC wide. Although it would be interesting to see, especially if you could organize it by region (with Michigan being one of the major regions to watch).

As for the Jaguars, we used them exclusively this year, but it was mainly because of the CAN functionality. Talking about metal shavings, we have fried two this way, but in the Finger Lakes regional, we chopped off a full inch of off the top of our robot with the Jaguars still on (not advised, we forgot to remove all the electronics while doing this, lucky us), and they did not fry from any shavings coming off of the supports.

We also have a large number of Victors, and we used to be an exclusive Victor team, but we use the build in PID on a Jaguar a lot and since we know the Jaguar well from using it on every shooter wheel, we have used them on Drive Train since we know how to use them.
We have never used Talons, but based on what we have heard, it sounds like they would be better for drive train purposes on our team, but due to the built in PID on a Jaguar, we would still be using Jaguars for manipulators.

[Mike9966]

Hi everyone,
Our team, which is in it's 6th year, has used only Jag's for all of our history. We started with them because they were more interesting, and sophisticated. I think the the first year was PWM just because the old tan Jag's didn't have the 232-CAN converter capability that the black ones that came out the next year did.

We have fried I think 5 in the last 5 years, and I only know of one that wasn't our fault, it was the driver chip in that version of Jag's.

I encourage the team to NEVER do metal work with the electronics mounted, and I think that's good practice no matter what you are using.
Of course sometimes it's unavoidable, and then we cover things up, and use a shop vac to suck things up as we are drilling, etc.

We like the CAN, although I will say it can (no pun intended ) be trying once and a while.
The feedback, and control it offers is great to work with though.

We did learn one lesson last year and that was not to use 10 or more Jag's on the CAN bus at a time when using the first black Jag as a serial-CAN converter. There were timeout issues and the robot wouldn't work properly half the time with 11 Jags.
We backed it off to 8 Jag's and everything suddenly worked great!

Anyways, we've already bought some more anticipating this years season.

A poll, or survey would be a great idea, how many use the 3 different brands of controllers, and how many use CAN?

Next year will the Talons have CAN? That'd be cool.

I was thinking about one of the posts about max current output. If one liked Talons for instance because they could put out 100 A continously, and one had 4 CIMs on the drive train, that'd be 400 A draw. I'm thinking your wiring and so forth wouldn't last long if you did that all the time.....
Maybe you don't want that capability?

Maybe you'd use the sensor in the Jag for current feedback to the software in the cRio, and when it approched say, 50A, a warning would come on and a routine might back off the current so as to not burn things up.
Sometimes drivers need to know when to stop pushing the joystick forward if the bot isn't moving....... lol I'm just saying

Whatever you use, have fun and be safe,

Mike

[FrankJ]

It will be interesting to see what motor controllers are in IFIs product unveil on 12/11/2013. We have used talons, victors & jags. I would put them all in the reliable category. Most of our failures have not been really a drive issue. (reversed power connections, swag, etc are not controller failures). If you running motors at high stall currents (IE prolonged pushing matches you are probably better off with a talon or victor. We have sucessfully used canbus on the jags with few issues.

I expect to see more canbus on the 2015 platform. Maybe one the Alpha testers could comment on that.

[Joe Ross]

Originally Posted by FrankJ

I expect to see more canbus on the 2015 platform. Maybe one the Alpha testers could comment on that.

The 2015 power distribution panel is CAN enabled to allow reading of status. The Pneumatics Control Module also uses CAN for controlling solenoids and configuring the module. CAN Jaguars will be supported, but there's still some bugs in the current implementation (that's why we're alpha testing). No other CAN Speed controllers have been announced.

[brennonbrimhall]

Originally Posted by Joe Ross

No other CAN Speed controllers have been announced.

I believe I saw the CTRE folks at their IRI booth demoing a CAN-Based Talon (controlled via a 2CAN and hooked up into the 2015 PDB), on track for being legal in the 2015 season. Can anyone else confirm this?

[hzheng_449]

Originally Posted by Mike9966

We did learn one lesson last year and that was not to use 10 or more Jag's on the CAN bus at a time when using the first black Jag as a serial-CAN converter. There were timeout issues and the robot wouldn't work properly half the time with 11 Jags.
We backed it off to 8 Jag's and everything suddenly worked great!
Mike

Hi Mike, just out of curiosity was your team using a RS-232 CAN adapter or a 2CAN? I ask since my team is currently experimenting with using a 2CAN, and it would be concerning (to say the least) if timeout issues still happen w/ the 2CAN.

[s1900ahon]

Originally Posted by hzheng_449

Hi Mike, just out of curiosity was your team using a RS-232 CAN adapter or a 2CAN?

As his post said, he was using the RS232-to-CAN bridging capability of a black Jaguar (the first in the chain).

I sent Mike a PM indicating that reliability could be improved by ensuring that the CAN bus was terminated with 100 ohm resistors (one at each end). Yes, I know that the CAN bus specifies 120 ohm termination at each end, but the 100 ohm values was specified by LMI/TI to improve bus timing in the change from dominant to recessive.

One thing that I'd suggest is that teams use CAN for the things that need CAN and use PWM elsewhere. PWM is "free" CAN bandwidth.

[rsegrest]

Originally Posted by IndySam

We will never use a Jaguar again, they just caused way too many problems.

We used a mix of talons and victor 888 last year and were very happy with the performance of both. Unless there are rule changes we will do the same this year.

We agree completely. We blew up too many jags doing bad things to them. Went all Victor and Talons last year. Think we may go all Victors this year with Talons to supplement. Overall we were pleased with both and MUCH more pleased with either over the jags.