Luminary Micro / Jaguar

Technical Electrical
1

My name is Scott Emley, and I am the product marketing manager at Luminary Micro. It was a pleasure seeing and meeting many of you during the KickOff in N.H. this past weekend! (brrrr!) I was just as excited as you were when the rules were announced. With the legalization of high-impacts and implementation of a “lunar” playing surface, I am sure glad we designed the Jaguar securely encased in industrial plastic and with the ability to handle finer (low-speed) control.

There is a bunch of new traffic on Chief Delphi, and most of my posts are buried in other threads, so I figured I would start a new one for reference.

Luminary Micro has partnered with Digi-Key to make available the new Jaguar (MDL-BDC) speed controller to all FRC teams! Of course, you have received a predetermined number of Jaguar speed controllers in your KoP distribution, and this program is designed to provide FRC teams exclusive access to additional speed controllers for a >30% discount to the normal resale price. The Jaguar discount program is only available to FRC teams and only through Digi-Key by visiting: http://sales.digikey.com/dkes/FirstRoboticsCompetition.asp

To qualify for the discount, you must enter in your team information, a shipping address within the general geographical location (state/country) of your team, and you must enter a valid phone number so the FRC Order Team at Digi-Key can validate your identity and thus honor your discount request.

It is important you remember to use the Digi-Key link above – or you will be like the rest of the world and have to pay full price. Don’t be distracted because Luminary Micro has several worldwide distributors (including Digi-Key) that will be carrying the Jaguar at full price.

To answer a question that was asked on another thread: this is not a promotional discount, meaning (as an FRC team member or mentor) you will have access to this discount throughout the season.

By the way, Luminary Micro has unveiled the Jaguar to the rest of the world as a reference design, and now is a good time to remind teams that, while you might read or realize the full potential of the Jaguar on Luminary Micro’s website, the official FRC 2009 game rules (or restrictions for that matter) are now announced. More explicitly, I discourage you from monkeying with the firmware on the Jaguar ---- even though you might be tempted. (I’m an engineer… I understand this temptation.)

As far as documentation is concerned, please see the Jaguar Getting Started Guide on the Jaguar microsite at http://www.luminarymicro.com/jaguar. I’ll keep referring to this site for the latest documentation regarding the Jaguar, so I encourage you to bookmark the link. It contains docs, the Jaguar reorder link, support links, and links back to Luminary Micro’s main web page (we make lots more than Jaguars!).

Looking forward to supporting you guys this year. A few of us have been / will be monitoring the posts here as best we can.

Best Regards,
Scott

P.S. I thought it was cool that Team 47 sponsors this forum. I really like that number as you can tell!

P.S.S. Search utlinebacker and s1900ahon to find our posts.

2

Scott,
Greetings from team 319 in Alton NH. I woke up this morning, and the temp was 4 degrees above zero. Heat wave.
In all seriousness, we are attempting to connect our Jaguars have have found that three of our pwm conections are female, and we have one that is a male. Any words of wisdom?
-Brian

1 Like
3

I’m not sure if this will help but it was recognized early on that some of the PWM cables weren’t exactly built as intended.

Here’s a link to a document that describes how to modify some of these cables.

http://www.usfirst.org/uploadedFiles/Relay%20Cable%20Memo.pdf

Russ

4

Thank you Russ, but it is not the pwm cables, it is the pwm connections on the jaguar. Three of them are female ports, and will recieve the modified cables, the other port is a male. The conections on the side car are male. I could build a double female cable, but I would like to know if there is a deeper issue with this one Jaguar.

5

Take a picture of the offending connection and send it as an attachment in email to mailto:[email protected]. If it is a botched assembly by the contract manufacturer, a replacement can be made via an RMA. This will be the quickest way to deal with it. Please include contact information.

6

This looks like a good place to post a jaguar question. We were doing some testing with fisher motors on jaguars. The jaguar was connected to the 40 amp self-resetting breakers on the PD board. We found that under continuous high current draw (less than 40 amps because the breakers didn’t blow) the motors would shut off after a few seconds, then come on and off randomly for less than a second at a time. The leds on the jaguars never faltered, staying bright and steady. If we reverse the motor under load it doesn’t reverse at all, just shuts off (again the leds were showing as expected, solid colors, red one dir. and green the other) for a few seconds and then starts pulsing. Any ideas? Is there an internal temperature limiter on the Jaguar?

7

Yes, there’s an internal temperature limiter on the Jaguars, as well as an over current limit. It’s possible to set these off without tripping the breaker, as the snap action breakers can often operate for a considerable length of time at up to 200% their rated current. However, when you do so, the Jag should flash a red LED, and shouldn’t start up again until 3 seconds after the fault has cleared.

I don’t know if it’s the case with this year’s FP motors, but some of the motors in the past have come with thermal overload shut-offs. This is a thermal switch integral to the motor that will kill power to the motor if it reaches a particular temperature. You can check if this is your problem by spraying the inside of the motor with cold-in-a-can, or an upside down can of compressed air. If you do this after the start-stop behavior begins, and it starts running well again, then you’ve identified the problem. Be careful to avoid spraying the brushes, as the thermal shock could crack them. Also, don’t do this while you’re still applying power to the motor, as the condensation might short things.

If this solves your problem, then you’re pushing the FPs a little too hard or aren’t adequately cooling them. Make sure you haven’t blocked the cooling slots at the back of the motor, and see if you can open up and air path for the cooling slots on the front of the motor. Otherwise, reduce the load on the motors by gearing them down a little more. Of course, if it takes more than 2 minutes of continuously running for them to start acting up, you might just want to live with it, and resign yourself to cooling them down between rounds.

EDIT: Just found a thread declaring that the -9012 FPs do have thermal protection built in. So your problem is almost certainly with over heating the FPs, as opposed to overloading the Jags.

8

Martin,
The FP motors for the last two years have had integral thermal protection. The thermal switch is visible on close examination of the motor through the vents at the brush end of the motor. It is an extra assy between the outside terminal and one of the brushes.

9

00968-9015 is the motor for this year. The -9012 motors are Mabuchis from a couple of years ago. (Al says they all have thermal protection, so the Kevin’s point stands.)