Are the black jaguars addressable via CAN out-of-the-box?
I understand there is a firmware update that’s supposed to happen for FRC use, but that must be done with either CAN or jtag.
Is there some way to update firmware over serial that doesn’t use the CAN bus?
Marshall -
There is a good chance I’m about to answer the wrong question. Please don’t hesitate to correct me.
The black jaguars can be updated over serial without any CAN bus connections. Simply plug the serial adaptor (the 6 conductor blackwire) in to your laptop and load new firmware.
You mean with the BDC-COMM? I’m pretty sure that goes through CAN. (That is, the data goes from the serial line in to the processor, out the master CAN controller, and into the slave CAN controller, and then into the processor. When nothing is hooked up to the serial port, only the slave CAN controller is used.)
Is there another utility you’re referring to?
(You are correct, this is my secondary question if the answer to the first question is “no”).
BDC-COMM goes through Serial to a Black Jaguar, which translates to CAN. If you are talking to a single Black Jaguar, it just uses serial.
Okay, I see what you’re saying. There’s only one CAN transceiver.
Let me see if I can update the firmware without having to address a device number.
Okay, I got “Unable to contact the bootloader!”. (I have BDC-COMM version 89)
I’m going to wait until my first question is answered before I try much harder to fix what might not be the problem. My Jaguars appear to be fully functional in every way except CAN or (perhaps) Serial communication.
Is it normal for Black Jaguars to echo back every serial message they get?
Is this still the same adapter that you were using earlier?
It sounds like you don’t have any communications to the Jaguar, and as such, the “Failed to contact the bootloader” error makes sense.
Have you tried other adapters?
And you are sure that the pinout is correct on your adapter?
Do you have more then one black jaguar? if so, try communicating with that one.
Yes to all.
I’ll make it clear when this topic is open-ended.
I have two questions currently:
Do the Black Jaguars work with CAN out-of-the-box?
Is it normal for them to echo back serial data that is sent to them?
Another way of phrasing this is:
What is the functionality of the firmware on the Black Jaguars when they are shipped?
EDIT:
Upon re-looking at the getting started guide, it appears that the only difference between the default firmware and the FIRST firmware is the “untrusted mode”.
I mis-spoke earlier in this post. I haven’t tried a different adapters, but I have confirmed (with an oscilloscope) that my adapter is sending and receiving data.
Well, I found the problem was with my adapter; the pin-out was backwards.
However, it’s a commercial female RJ-12. It was manufactured with the colors backwards.
Umm, no actually, CAN is backwards. This was my #1 complaint about CAN. You cannot buy off the self cables. You have to make them. This is very error prone. We spent several weeks debugging CAN because we kept getting something wrong in the cabling. Once the cables were right it seemed to work fine.