DongleHider+ - Multiple dongles and a normal USB A socket

Lowkey love this thing. Also my first time soldering on something I intend to use, so thanks for forcing me to learn that handy skill :grinning_face:

Made my own from a translucent USB-C Expansion Card with a bit of Dremel work and Gorilla Epoxy ^^

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I can confirm that this works great for keychron usb dongles. However you do need wire snips to cut away the plastic on the dongle to get to the PCB.

I finally got to test my dongle hider today since I received my FW16, and I have a possibly stupid question: when I plug something into the usb port, the dongle stops working. Is that intended behavior, or did I do something wrong?

Shouldn’t happen unless your dongle has a really bad antenna. You are using a plastic enclosure right?

heya sorry if ive ben blind but i saw some poeple could order these before but i cant find the place to either order or put down im interested for another batch sorry if i missed it so was curious where i have to go

I think that was through Josh Cook’s website. Probably a college kid that took on too much and eventually couldn’t handle it. probably. Nobody knows since he just disappeared.

So afaik there is no place to order one right now, though I might be wrong.

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Since about two month ago his website https://i2clabs.com.au/ is no longer available. So, I don’t expect him to return producing, selling or shipping anything.

Domain seems to have expired, I just hope Josh is ok somehow.

Very late response, but yes. Oddly enough, the dongle only stops working sometimes, and I noticed this in the GitHub repo

When connected to a USB4 capable expansion card slot and an external USB 3 device is plugged in, the internal dongle stops working, but is still displayed as connected in Windows.

  • As soon as the USB 3 device gets unplugged, the internal dongle immediately begins to work again (probably without a re-enumeration).

  • USB 2 devices seem to work without a problem for the most part, although one of the tested USB thumb drives took a few re-plugs until it enumerated.

  • This behaviour is not seen on the other non-USB4-capable expansion card slots, there USB 3 devices work great alongside the internal dongle

I am on Fedora 43 KDE edition, so I guess this problem is also present outside of windows.

There is also someone who has an etsy shop for these. I got the retrofit one in august 2025 and it works great! I think the retrofit design is slightly different so that you can swap the guts of an official usb A expansion card. That’s what I ended up doing.

https://www.etsy.com/shop/DarkModsUK?listing_id=1709239840&from_page=listing

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I ordered from here and it arrived just yesterday. Seems to work pretty well!

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Would it matter if it was one of the aluminium ones? Does that interfere with the signal?

I’m using one of the aluminum casings and it still works, but I do think the signal is a bit weaker as a result. I have to keep the “dongle” card on the side of the laptop closer to my mouse since it’s not right next to it. The USB A cards are all full aluminum casings so you’d need to modify it if you wanted plastic.

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Ah, good to know. I only own aluminium ones but if I order a card I can just have my brother print a case for me if that works better.

Thanks!

Keep in mind if you order the retrofit dongleplus from the place i linked, it comes with a plastic half case. I dont think it would fit with the other half of the official framework case bur its built in a way that you could use it as is c: