The fake coin cell is a great idea, looks very nice.
If somebody does not want to solder, would it be an option to have an adapter between the battery connector to get the power? (Like the mainboard on one side, battery on the other, steal energy in between)
That connector is already in a tight space to pull out (Gen11/13"); I doubt that an intermediate connector will still allow unplugging.
And the ubiquitous warnings about bent connector pins likely come from some bad experiences as it is already…
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I think that the optimal solution could be to connect to one of the pins that are from the battery connector but without soldering or having to remove the battery, so I propose iterating from the current fake coin solution but (instead of soldering) having something small and clip-like to connect to the pins (the blue arrows point to them on the image attached) on the mainboard that are actually from the battery connector but are exposed even when the battery is connected, they also don’t have the space constraints of the battery connector (explained by @suliblian above), I think there might be a voltage step-down converter needed since the output voltage of the main battery would be significantly higher than the output voltage of the coin cell battery on the Framework laptop.
For users this should be a much much simpler solution since there would be no soldering or removal of the battery required, just swapping the real coin battery with the fake one and clipping onto the correct pin on the mainboard. Therefore it could be done at home even for noobs, from my amateur perspective, the only downside would be the additional design and manufacturing complexity in integrating a voltage step-down convertor into the fake coin battery (and having the small clip-like thing on the other end).
Source of the original image (I added the blue arrows):
IF the right pin is known AND IF it is possible to scrape off a little insulation there[*], it might be possible to clamp on a little spring-y connector, similar to the one in bottom left in the image below, but with a |_| shaped cross section of the business end (they exist, I have seen theme somewhere).
If such a mini-clamp connector comes already wired to the coin cell located dummy, all the user would have to do were scrape off of the insulation, clamp it on with a pair of tweezers, and pop in the coin cell board.
[*] (I have not opened the FW to look)
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Oh I was unaware that there would be insulation on those pins, this shouldn’t complicate things much though, presumably either the clamp/clip-like thing or the Framework screwdriver could be used to scrape off the insulation.
I see, I thought that the voltage from the soldering point on the mainboard
(in the current fake coin battery solution) would be similar to the output voltage of the real coin battery and there is no voltage step-down convertor on the fake coin battery. If the voltage step-down convertor is already present on the fake coin battery though, then there is one less issue with the solution I proposed.
I am hopeful.
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“Clamping” a conductor carrying live voltage, especially on a portable device, is not something to realistically suggest as a fix for this.
Honestly, the current fix in progress is extremely elegant, and easy enough that anyone with a decently steady hand can do it. I don’t know that we’re going to achieve anything meaningful by continuing to ideate on a problem that has a clear and pending solution.
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Not to mention that continuing to discuss this can introduce ideas that don’t need to be integrated by Framework, but can be used by individual users in the case that they don’t have a steady hand and need a creative solution to modify what Framework can offer in order to be useful to them.
This discussion happening doesn’t affect you, and if you think it is cluttering the thread, send a message to the moderators requesting that it be spun off into a separate topic instead of shutting down others conversations
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