Talons, Jaguars and Victors - where do you stand?

[theawesome1730]

We used only Victor 888s and we were very pleased. Other than some slight issues when using "y" PWMs on drivetrain Victors, everything went very well. They are very robust and we haven't had to replace a single one yet (through 2 regionals and lots of practice). I would like to run talons for next year, game permitting (need of PID loops for shooter wheels or whatnot in an instance where very linear response is necessary).

[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!

[Michael DiRamio]

Originally Posted by mman1506

The only big team not using talons that I saw was 1114 who only used victors as they are sponsored by IFI

I would just like to make it clear that, while we are extremely thankful for the support of IFI, we would use Victors either way.

Year after year they have proven to be a reliable and robust component of our robots.

[mman1506]

Originally Posted by Michael DiRamio

I would just like to make it clear that, while we are extremely thankful for the support of IFI, we would use Victors either way.

Year after year they have proven to be a reliable and robust component of our robots.

Sorry about misquoting you guys. I should have worded that better.

[ehochstein]

2470 used a combination of victors and jags this year. Needless to say we will never be using Jaguars again, at the competition we ended up replacing all of our jags with victors as the jags kept failing. I told the kids we were going to try out Talons next year.

Now that it is the off-season for us I've started to do some testing as to why our jags failed. So far I've found that anytime the robot is enabled and one of our problem jaguars has an active PWM connection the LED indicator light will blink red as if it was getting a reverse signal. I've tried just about everything to stop this from happening - replacing the limit switch jumpers, reseting the jag etc. but it continues to not work. My diagnosis at the moment is a failed thermistor.

[Ether]

Originally Posted by Wiifi

...we will never be using Jaguars again, at the competition we ended up replacing all of our jags with victors as the jags kept failing.

Are these the old design Jags from Luminary and/or Texas Instruments? Or are you talking about the improved design (conformal-coated PCB) from Vex?

[ehochstein]

Originally Posted by Ether

Are these the old design Jags from Luminary and/or Texas Instruments? Or are you talking about the improved design (conformal-coated PCB) from Vex?

They are all pre-2013, we have some VEX jags from the PDV but we have not used them.

[Ether]

Originally Posted by Wiifi

They are all pre-2013, we have some VEX jags from the PDV but we have not used them.

It's important to make that distinction. VEX has invested a lot of time and money, and worked very hard to improve the Jag.

[ehochstein]

Originally Posted by Ether

It's important to make that distinction. VEX has invested a lot of time and money, and worked very hard to improve the Jag.

Thank you for the suggestion, we were originally going to use the new jags on the robot but we had a few problems with our PDV. They ended up arriving after we had installed the bulk of our electrical system and we never got around to replacing them.

We are currently two motor controllers short on our robot, I'll see if I can convince the kids to put the new jags on. Are the changes documented anywhere?

[Ether]

Originally Posted by Wiifi

Are the changes documented anywhere?

I provided a link in an earlier post.

[Jared Russell]

We used 888s because we got shut out from Talons (FIRST Choice debacle then out of stock right before we ordered).

I have nothing bad to say about the 888s, other than I still hate the finicky PWM connectors.

[dudefise]

We used a combination of Talons and Jaguars this year. I was very impressed with the Talons' resilience; we lost connection one match and ran into a wall, stall all 4 CIMs for the remainder of the match. One talon burned, but the rest were undamaged.It was later determined that the burned talon was due to a wiring fault.
We will probably use Talons for all drive motors in the future, and Jaguars for sensor-based or precision applications.

[Gregor]

Originally Posted by dudefise

We used a combination of Talons and Jaguars this year. I was very impressed with the Talons' resilience; we lost connection one match and ran into a wall, stall all 4 CIMs for the remainder of the match. One talon burned, but the rest were undamaged.It was later determined that the burned talon was due to a wiring fault.
We will probably use Talons for all drive motors in the future, and Jaguars for sensor-based or precision applications.

Did you press the E-Stop? That's pretty much the reason it exists.