I am sure someone else knows better than me on this forum, but I often hear customers state 3-5% is standard/acceptable. Of course, it is acceptable to me, too, until I am the one that experiences the failure. This is why we are endeavoring to make Jaguar even better.
Dr. Ian Thomas (retired) in the University of Texas at Austin Electrical Engineering dept always had a famous quote when his class wondered why a surprise question popped up on the test that a good majority of the class would probably panic with or choke on. Students would file up at his desk during the exam to inquire 1:1 about it, and his constant, steadfast response to each panicked student was: “Don’t look at me like that. You… were… WARNED!” Call me crazy, but I loved that class, and I love FIRST, even though in both cases, “I… was… WARNED!”
TI is a great company, with great products, and they stand behind their stuff with massive resources. As a paying customer for most of my career, no, they’re not the least expensive. But they’re the best.
I wonder if you can shed any light on the discrepancy with the in stock vs. backorder issue at Digi-Key. This link http://www.luminarymicro.com/component/option,com_buynow/Itemid,328/pid,214/return,522/ shows that according to Luminary, Digi-Key has 4100 units in stock. Yet with my recent order, Digi-Key says that it is back-ordered, that their scheduled recieve date was 11/5/09, and that they hope to get some soon. Their sales reps can only say what they see on their computer, but it seems that someone’s computer is wrong. Any idea what the real inventory situation is? Will units that are ordered now be the same as 2009 units?
Just to report on my own question…Digi-Key reports that they have recieved some Jags and our order is shipping. Don’t know how many they have. I assume these are 2009 units since the black jags are still in beta.
Scott, AKA UTlinebacker
First it is note worthy that at my work place one of our most respected engineers played Football for WSU. Instead of pursuing a career in sports he is a civil engineer with his PE… Who happens to be overseeing the construction of two of the worlds largest reinforced concrete water reservoirs.
Thanks for the details I had overlooked the failure report. Out teams only Jag failure was from human error. V+ and V- reversed. This blew copper all over the board and one way or another took out the 5v regulator and U6. the FETs appear to have survived just fine . The Victor that suffered the same fate in 08 didn’t fare as well, It lost 6/12ths of its FETs.
In my experience human error is one of the most common reasons for failure. Usually we (our team) does a lot of color coding and labeling to try to prevent errors from “heat of the moment” maintenance. In this case the coach didn’t have someone else check his work prior to power up.
The Red and Black screws for V+ and V- are a good example of simple things that can be done to help prevent errors. Taking this one step farther; No matter what color the package is the raised lettering can be difficult to read when put in a robot. We use a paint pen smeared across the jumper labels to highlight the lettering. I could really dig some more TI red on the raised lettering!
Finally for our team the Jag linearity improves drivability and that trumps all other considerations such as: form factor, cost and even reliability.
And by the way we really appreciated the Luminary Micro guy coming to Portland last year.
Thanks
