Hello,
My coach has asked me to figure out how to configure a Jaguar motor controller. In the past, the team has had Jaguars burn out due to improper configuration. I didn’t even know that Jaguars were configurable.
After googling around, I found out that our team is using PWM cables to connect the sidecar to the Jaguars.
How does one “Configure” a Jaguar?
One doesn’t “configure” a Jaguar. You connect a Jaguar to the Digital Sidecar via PWM cable (make sure it’s not backwards on either end). Then, power goes in one side of the Jag from the PDB and out the other end to the motor (make sure they line up red-red and black-black). Jaguars tend to heat up when dust/sawdust gets into the Jag.
PWM control of a Jaguar should work with no configuration whatsoever. You can do a very limited amount of “configuration” of a Jaguar with jumpers. Specifically, you can set the Brake/Coast jumper and enable automatic ramp mode with the limit switch jumpers.
Brake mode (basically) shorts the motor leads together when you’re not giving a command to the Jag. That causes the motor to slow down and resist being turned at any great speed. Coast mode leaves the motor leads “open” which lets the motor spin freely.
Automatic Ramp Mode will ramp your motor command up or down instead of instantly changing it. It works out to 0.125 seconds to go from full forward to full reverse. Which is really pretty fast, but might keep you from blowing up a Jag if you often instantly go from full forward to full reverse. You enable automatic ramp mode by inserting the limit switch jumpers horizontally instead of vertically.
And that’s it. Any and all other configuration is only relevant to a team using the Jaguar in CAN mode, because nearly all of the other configuration available is only usable in CAN mode.
EDIT: What exactly makes you or your coach think you’re blowing Jaguars due to improper configuration? The Grey Jags could blow from switching rapidly from forward to reverse, the Black Jags are much less prone to this failure mode. The most common way of blowing a Black Jag is by dropping metal shavings in it and shorting it out.
Thanks,
After re-reading my coach’s email, I think he may have been referencing the configuration of the digital sidecar’s 6V enable mode.
Jaguars do not use the red wire of a PWM cable, so the 6V jumper on the sidecar has no effect.
-Scott
IIRC, that 6v enable mode is strictly for the use of servos through the Sidecar. Make sure all of the jumpers are out where the Jags are plugged in. It may or may not be the cause of your frying of Jaguars.
Ditto CalTran. I don’t think the Jags even connect that pin, but better to leave the jumper off any PWM that’s not for a servo. Safer and less chance for shorts and things.
It isn’t. Look at the schematic if you have lingering doubts.
I am not saying that connecting 6V is a correct thing to do; we all agree it is intended for powering servos. What I am saying that this is not going to be the cause of your problems; look elsewhere.
-Scott
P.S. BTW, Victors (and probably Talons) are not different in this respect… the PWM interfaces of Jaguars and Victors are opto-isolated.
The only other way to configure a Jaguar (that hasn’t already been listed) is to calibrate it, and I’d be very impressed if you managed to fry a Jaguar by calibrating it.
The most common causes of Jaguar death are a reversed power supply (the polarity of the power supply is reversed) and swarf (letting metal shavings etc into the Jaguar itself, causing a short that smokes it).
I suppose this also brings up a question for the OP:
When you fry these Jaguars, does smoke come out of them?
Well, there is one way of frying a Jag during configuration, but with what you’re doing, I don’t think it is a problem, but let me put it out there just in case someone else is having the same problem. If and when you configure the Jaguars for using CAN, you could fry the board (we’ve done it, but I can’t remember exactly how we managed to fry it, and it may have been improper handling of the device).
That means your serial-to-CAN was wired wrong, or there was a manufacturing defect.
Well, this was when we were trying to assign IDs to the Jaguars, so we weren’t using the CAN connection. Anyhow, that probably wasn’t the OP’s problem.
I think he was referring to the process of flashing the Jaguar’s firmware during “configuration,” which could indeed brick them if done incorrectly.
Ah, I see. “Frying” usually implies physical damage (e.g. something went up in smoke), so I didn’t catch what you meant. Bricking is a more apt term here.
You might want to upgrade the firmware, but it probably makes sense to wait and see if a new version is released for this season before you do this to a bunch of Jags. It might be a good idea to learn how to do this, particuarly if this has been a problem in the past or if your team has not done this before, but even for practice it probably makes sense to just read up on the procedure and then see if anything has changed before actually attempting it.
Interesting you say that, because one of the units we played with did smoke. Or at least, there was visible damage on the board. But again, I doubt this is the OP’s problem, since they are using PWM cables (not CAN).
May be try the operators manual that may be found at;
http://www.ti.com/lit/ug/spmu022c/spmu022c.pdf
Hope it helps.