I have a framework Laptop 13, with the official 60W charger, I’ve been using it to test USB-PD trigger boards, and realized that it refuses to output 12V. When I try to select 12V, it outputs 9V, but I can select the 15V and 20V settings, which work fine. When testing the same USB-PD trigger board on a variety of other chargers, they’re all capable of outputting 12V. I wonder if this is just some technical limitation of the 60W charger, or if there’s something else going on here?
I will just use other chargers for my projects going forward, but I’d still like to know whether this is just a limitation of the charger, or something else is going on. I guess the Laptop never uses 12V for charging, but it still seems weird that only 12V is missing.
12V PDO was a profile along time ago, but that was basically thrown out of the PD standard before we even got USB-C. So its a legacy and deprecated profile that is completely optional and not recommended for USB-C chargers to support. Very few devices use it, as they cannot rely on any charger actually supporting it. Only 5V, 9V 15V and 20V are official PDOs of up to 100W PD chargers.
The FW 60W charger hence does not support a 12V profile and does so completely in accordance with the PD specifications.
But since the FW charger does support PPS, any device can just request an arbitrary voltage between 3.3V and 21V and the charger will supply it. I guess your trigger boards don’t support any of the advanced PD features, simply blindly request the legacy 12V profiles and fallback on requesting completely different voltages if that is not available. So this is much more about your trigger boards and how those don’t do anything safe (i.e. don’t connect power if its not what the user configured).
@Ray519 Thanks for the answer, I pulled another, larger/more expensive trigger board out, and it does manage to get 12V from the Framework charger, which aligns with what you’ve said. Seems like the smaller, cheaper trigger boards are gonna be a bit more hit-and-miss with what chargers they can get 12V from.
Thanks again for the quick response, it’s exactly what I wanted to know.
Framework should list all voltage/current specification on the product description page, not just “generic”
An ultra-high-efficiency 60W charger using GaN technology to stay cool and compact. The included detachable USB-C and AC cables make it easy to adapt to your needs.
It was not. But USB started designing the PD standard originally for USB-A.
That was PD version 1.x. It never made it into actual products before they had that change of heart, dropped all USB-A support, replaced with USB-C and replaced 12V with 15V. That is why 12V is so legacy. It was already removed before the first versions we ever saw in the wild (PD 2.0 and onwards).
Just that PD technically allows you to declare any voltage in those profiles, it just would be a non-standard one that likely no device other than your own would use.
Nintendo Switch 1 is like one of the examples of a device actually using 12V PD in some cases.
Don’t know. But I imagine once you defined 20V, 5A and 3A as your limits, 15V probably allows for a more sane intermediate step (i.e. mandatory from 27W up to 45W, when 20V also become mandatory. For 12V you would reach the upper end at 36W with the same 3A limit, which hardly sounds worthwhile).
Edit: They also apparently had not defined 9V as an intermediate step, back when 12V was still it (so it was 5V, 12V, 20V and they changed it to 5V, 9V, 15V and 20V). Presumably on input from manufacturers.
And its close enough to 12V that it should be easy for hardware originally designed for 12V to be easily modified to make it work.
Also, there are very few things that run on those voltages directly. Its just a common intermediate level between external power supplies and internal power circuitry.
But if you consider you need to design all the port, electronics for USB-C and PD handling, stepping voltage down from a different voltage is like the simplest thing you need to do. So probably not much interest in using that. Especially vs. 19-20V on which almost any notebook run on, which were prime candidates since USB-C is already designed for PCs.
Thanks for your information. From I understanding the 12V, 24V etc is more from industries that many have currents of 10A, 20A, 30A etc, so they are not the same type of devices that common USB port powers. Thus, PD “split” the 12V into 9V and 15V to give more steps
We live on a sailboat and try to charge/power via 12 volts. I was using a 19v boost converter to power a previous laptop and replaced it with a 20v of the same brand. I connected to my FW13 and THE SMOKE CAME OUT. I assume/hope that I only cooked the battery but wonder what went wrong.
You CANNOT use a DC power directly to a Framework laptop. The “previous laptop” uses DC barrel jack input and it’s power topology is different than the Framework. Framework Laptops use USB-C Power Delivery and accepts multiple voltage levels (9~20V) to stay compliant. If you connect the 19V directly to the Framework, it’s DC-DC converter will freak out because it doesn’t know which voltage is negotiated.
To make matters worse, you used a boost converter, a boost converter cannot reduce voltage and many cheap ones don’t even have over-current protection (buck converter can simply set duty 0% however on boost setting duty to 0% means the same, not zero, output voltage), which caused a 12V shorting the mainboard and fried it.
It has nothing to do with whether 12V is supported by PD or not but with everything to do with the existence of PD negotiation. If a negotiated voltage doesn’t work it’ll try to negotiate another voltage to make it at least work at a lower performance, but without negotiation it will cause damage.
I think you need a mainboard not a battery replacement since the input power is not directly connected to the battery
Ok. So, why does the AC to DC converter that supplies 20V DC work when my 12V DC to 20V DC boost does not. My thinking was that 20DC is 20V DC no matter what the source. Obviously I’m wrong but I don’t know why.
Yes, very wrong. Any usb connection starts at 5V. It always has. That has been the design from the late 90s or whenever usb ports first came out. In order to keep it backwards compatible, it has always been 5V.
To get anything else, there are built-in negotiation to make sure the device, charger, AND cable can all support the requested higher voltages. If they all pass, then it is allowed. Blasting 20 volts without any of the negotiation is sending 20V to a port expecting only 5V, blowing it up, voiding warranties, etc.
The only way polarity could have been reversed is if the usb cable was improperly manufactured. I don’t have an easy way to probe the +ve connection in the male end.
Pretty sure there is something else going on, Just applying 20V to a pd port (with the right polarity) should not cause any loss of magic smoke, it’ll just not work.
Do you have some more specifics on your setups, like how exactly you connected stuff together pictures maybe?
Keep in mind that it was basically 20V unregulated DC (no current limit) the little diodes and protection circuitry is not designed to take that kind of abuse on the mainboard.
Unnegotiated, it was expecting 5V and saw 20V. It is like opening up a fire hose to fill up a pint glass.
The takeaway is always use proper charging devices with Framework. USB is not the same as a DC barrel jack. Even if it was just 5V, it is still best to use the right device to charge expensive electronics.
Try shoving 20V into a $2,000 iPhone the same way and see what happens. There is probably someone on YouTube who has documented it.
For the little loss in efficiency, running a small DC to AC inverter and using the proper charger is the safest bet unless specialized equipment is purchased.
I believe there have been a few posts in the creators area talking about using a DC source for power for a specialized electronic device that was driven by a Framework mainboard. It has been a while though.
There is no abuse if no current is flowing. Unless the power mux gets told to enable input on that port the laptop won’t draw any power from the unregulated 20v. The power muxes in the 13 have reverse current protection on the 5v according to the datasheet I found flying around on the internet.
Not really, no, assuming you had the polarity right, if you applied the 20v the wrong way around or to some other pins that is a different question and very likely would end in damage.
That definitely would have been an issue earlier but these days I am not too sure the charge circuitry in the iphone uses pd now and just 5v only anymore. It also supports pd out which means it needs to have a power muxing mosfet and there is a good chance that mosfet can take 20v even if it is maybe not intended for it. 20v is kind of a common mosfet rating bracket.
Popper pd dc-dc converters work just fine, no need to take the detour over ac (I mean like power socket ac, the dc-dc converter of course uses ac too internally but you know what I mean)
@Neil_Ramsey’s barrel to USB-C converter cable’s data pins are not empty. It could have an integrated e-marker chip or PD trigger for bidirectional use. 5V PD can be triggered by solely resistors so low-cost cables may include this. When plugged in, the cable tried to negotiate PD from the Framework, since the Framework Laptop can only output 5V from its USB-C ports, the 20V went throught the +5V rail and fried it
There is no barrel connector involved. The cable involved came with as XT60 connector on one end an a USB C on the other. Polarity is correctly at the XT60 end but I don’t have a way to confirm the C end