jag apears to be dead after firmware update

one of our black jaguars died when we were using it to firmware update a grey jag to v.101 using a db9 cable into a black jag with a connection into the grey jag with terminator at the end. has any one experienced a similar issue and if so how can we save our jag from being bricked from the failed attempt to update one of our grey jags? Ever since we tried this bdc com cant seem to connect to the jag, or at least it no longer can use firmware update which is usually how our team quickly identifies that bdc com has communication.

p.s in the past we have done this using the same cable we put together a year ago and nothing went wrong.

This probably doesn’t have anything to do with your update. It was most likely the Jaguar itself. Jaguars are notoriously known for unreliability. Our team has had many just give out during tests or competition. This year, we have switched to using all victors. They are much more reliable and durable. They also last much longer. Most of the Victors we are using, are over three years old, and even after extensive use, they still work like new. If you have the opportunity, I would recommend using only Victors. It will make your robot much more reliable. If you still use Jaguars, be very careful with them, you don’t want another one to fail.

Under the File context menu, select “Recover Jaguar” and load in the Black Jaguar v.101 file. Unplug all of the other Jaguars from the bus (so the bricked one is the only one) and try to use that restore.

When updating the firmware on your tan Jaguar, make sure you enumerate it first, then make sure you select that CAN ID in BDC-Comm before updating it. Also, make sure you use the tan jaguar v.101 update.

This exact situation happened to us yesterday. Make sure you choose the correct Board ID before updating the firmware. We were adding a new Jaguar and left it the ID set to the first black Jaguar, tried to load the grey Jaguar firmware, then it appeared to be dead. After a few minutes of poking around, we did exactly what Cecil suggested and it works just fine now.

I would have agreed with Nathan a few years ago, but if you shield your Jaguars properly you will have no problem, and you can do a lot more with Jaguars. I’ve had plenty of problems with Victors as well.

Thanks for your support,
I think I figuired out the problem, the BDC-COMM updates the lowest board ID on the connection. Thanks for your help.

Also,
does anybody else have problems with connecting to the black jaguars through BDC-COMM? Two of the jaguars had the previous problem that I fixed (thanks all), but two others can’t seem to get communication. Has anyone else had this problem?

Make sure you are plugging the serial cable into the left port on the Jaguar, as only that side has 6 contacts in it needed for comms.

If that is not the case, I would check out this thread to see if that is the problem

Are you using a computer with serial or a usb to serial? We have found that not all usb to serial cables work and will brick the jag.

As far as Jag being reliability we have only had 2 break since first started the use of them. One was because metal debris fell inside the casing which can happen to a victor. The other was when we updated the firmware on a grey jag.

Last I checked any USB to serial adapter will work… just be sure you get the correct COM number.

My USB to serial cable works just fine, and it is over 4 years old. If it connects to one, it should connect to all of them just fine…

i don’t think our cable or our connection is the problem, we are using a db9 adapter cable just like the one that we run the can off of and it successfully worked on some of our jags. We are also plugging it into the right slot and have the terminator plug on the other end.

We’ve had a pretty bad experience with out of box failures (and boy, were the RMA techs surprised) - if plugging straight into the Jag doesn’t work (after trying recover, etc), your best option would be to RMA asap.

Alex, did your laptop crash at the same time as the jaguar update failed? Today we had both a grey and black jaguar die while updating them to v101. With the black jag, the pc crashed right after the update failed. We then tried the exact same thing on a different black jag successfully. Then, using the newly updated black jag as a bridge, we attempted to update a grey jag to v101. this failed, but the pc did not crash. now we have two bricks, a black and a grey. Both seem to draw power, but neither of the signal lights ever light up nor can BDC-comm communicate with either. The only possible explanation we can think of is maybe some sort of debris got into them and caused a short circuit, but it seems unlikely. Any ideas?

Try installing the utilities on another computer, and recover the jaguars using the method above.

our computer did not crash when our jag failed but our black jag and gray jag displayed similar issues to the ones you describe, as Cecil suggested i would recover them, and then make sure the board ids are right that’s what “killed” our jags when we tried to firmware update to 101. Fixing the board ids so that the grey jag was a lower number then the black jag resolved the grey jag update problem we had that was shutting down our black jags. However i have no explanation for why your single black jag died, nor can i figure out why we have ones that will flat out not receive communication from our computer. But i think your best bet in that situation is recovery.

p.s sorry for the wall of text i hope i helped

There seems to be a recurring problem with Jaguars this year with the contacts inside the CAN ports not making proper contact. Try looking here to see if that happens to be why they wont communicate properly.