pic: cRIO CAN Jag

[daltore]

If you think the RJ-45 connectors are going to be a problem you can still use the 3-pin molex if you want to...

This year, we made a nice little electronics box near the end of build season because our electronics boards had begun to look like we'd planted a wire bush and it grew. We ended up with our electronics vertically mounted on 1/8" Lexan with another piece of 1/8" Lexan on the outside to shield them. The only connection problem we had was the ethernet cable coming out because we hadn't checked to make sure it clicked before we went on the field (we'd been doing some tethered debugging). All of our Jaguars were on 1/4" mounts with two Jaguars per mount, so they were able to flop around a bit. The whole thing provided enough rigidity for nothing to break and enough flexibility that no shocks were conveyed directly into any components. Same type of system should work well for RJ-45, because the two Jaguars per mount would be easy to attach to, and then you have the two cables going to and coming from that mount that you can tie down in cable ties.

I'm not really worried about these connectors. We used them this year to carry the signal from our encoders to our digital breakout board and we used the little phone line couplings to change over between wires so we could replace them in segments. Since we were using swerve drive, after a couple of trips around a rogue wheel, the hot glue we used to mount the coupling popped off, and one of the encoders lost the connector on its board (not the RJ-45). Never had any problems at all with the RJ-45 connectors. And considering the build quality of these Jaguars (never replaced one once this year), I think the connectors should be of a high enough quality that they'll serve you well as long as you take care of the cable properly and keep the Jaguars protected.