Jaguar Lighting

[GoAndrewGo]

My mentor set me on a mission to find what the lighting on the Jaguars indicate. But, our main focus is finding out what the Slow Red Flashing light on the Jaguar means, and if it is fixable. Any form of help is appreciate. Thank you.

[Us3rNam3]

Slow red flashing light on Jag indicates over current. You are pushing to much current through the Jag and it's protecting itself.

[vhcook]

The Luminary Micro site has this lovely data sheet on the Jaguars that has everything you'd want to know about the indicator lights.

[Al Skierkiewicz]

Slow flashing red on the Jaguar indicates a fault. It can be either a under voltage, an over current or an over temperature fault or a limit has been reached. The fault results in no operation once the fault has been encountered and it remains for 3-4 seconds. If your LED is staying in the slow red flash for three seconds, then look into one of these causes. A low voltage condition is often caused by a low battery. A high current is usually caused by CIM motors in turns using sticky wheels and tank drive mode. High temp is usually caused by blocked cooling air in or around the jaguars.

[GoAndrewGo]

To your knowledge, are all fault conditions fixable, or is it possible that no matter what this Jaguar needs to be replaced.

[Bochek]

Originally Posted by GoAndrewGo

To your knowledge, are all fault conditions fixable, or is it possible that no matter what this Jaguar needs to be replaced.

We had the exact same problem, once we connected the Jag to a pc, BDC-Com reported an under voltage error. Turns out they are having a problem with the 5v regulators. The following is a report from Luminary Micro:

"Voltage regulator Failure (REG): Failures of the 3.3 V or 5.0 V linear regulator could be due to one of two conditions. The most likely root cause is excessive current draw from the power rail at the interface connector. The regulator is specified to shut down internally under these conditions; however, our testing has shown that this regulator feature does not work correctly. The second possible root cause is input over-voltage. The regulators have a maximum input voltage of 15 V, which is reflected in the absolute maximum rating of the Jaguar module. Bench tests have shown that the regulators function beyond 15 V with no degradation or failures at less than 17 V. Although there is no measured data showing DC supply voltages greater than 15 V, there is speculation that the supply could exceed this under certain regenerative conditions. Efforts to replicate this failure on the bench using a motor in full-regeneration were unsuccessful. Despite lack of correlation with bench testing, this is the only reasonable explanation for certain regulator failures, and because of the range of installations, not every condition can be reasonably replicated. Luminary Micro will use a regulator with an increased voltage range and functional over-current protection in future revisions of this design."

[Al Skierkiewicz]

Andrew,
Most faults are temporary. Find out what is causing the fault and fix it. Most of what you describe makes me think you have sticky wheels and tank style driving. This combination causes high current faults as well as low voltage faults. The cause is near stall current in the drive motors. The effect is the fault indication.

[Racer26]

Late in testing yesterday, 1075 ran into a Black Jag (MDL-BDC24) that would flash slow red any time it was enabled, regardless of whether or not a motor was connected. Any ideas? Disconnecting the PWM wire, and pulling->resetting the breaker for it caused it to go back to flashing yellow until you plugged the PWM back in.

[GoAndrewGo]

We are having a similar problem to 1075 with the old Jaguars, MDL-BDC. When we power up our robot the one Jaguar flashes slow yellow, then as soon as we enable it turns flashing slow red. We are currently running four Jaguars, 3 are working properly and only the one seems bad. Is this fixable? We are also wondering is anyone else possibly experienced a internal problem with the Jaguar itself. Any help is appreciated. Thank you.

[Chris_Elston]

Originally Posted by vhcook

The Luminary Micro site has this lovely data sheet on the Jaguars that has everything you'd want to know about the indicator lights.

This link doesn't work anymore. Does anyone have an updated link?

What does it mean when you have NO LED on a Jag, and then you pull the breaker and re-apply power and the LED blinks yellow in the disabled state? The Jag just shuts down when it's running and goes to a NO LED state?

[Al Skierkiewicz]

In either of the above cases, did you attempt to download the new firmware? If you are not using CAN and did not load new firmware, the faults indicated by a slow red flash are the same. It is possible that a permanent power supply fault internally or one of the components is overheating. It is also possible that some metallic dust has found it's way into the device. Try a vacuum cleaner around all the openings. If you are lucky it may have just confused the proc, unlucky and the device has died.

[vhcook]

Originally Posted by Chris_Elston

This link doesn't work anymore. Does anyone have an updated link?

My apologies. Here's what appears to be a more functional link to the getting started for the Grey Jaguars, and a link to the page I got there from, which has an assortment of other handy things.