Dual USB-C Expansion Card

I got curious and contacted a vendor on the german ebay, gonna report back the answer I got. :wink:

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Unfortunately, in my experience, a lot of direct-from-china sellers know little, if anything, about some products they sell. They are just resellers / drop-shippers. Too often they will pass along incomplete or just wrong specs. Disassembly, to verify whatā€™s going on inside, is a must. Looking up a datasheet if there is any chip inside.

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Looks like someone else tried it out way back in this thread:

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Looks like it was too good to be true. I also havenā€™t received an answer yet. Sorry for building up false hopes unnecessarily. :pray:

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This would be really cool to have! Even if I canā€™t charge with it, Iā€™d still use this as one of my expansion cards.

Hello again, some quick update on the enclosure:
One version of the enclosure parts just came in a few minutes ago (the MJF parts) :relieved:, the color is the ā€œI donā€™t careā€ option :sweat_smile:. They look pretty nice, some minor refinements to the design wonā€™t hurt but in general it fits nicely:


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@tbe is there somewhere list what it can do like left can do PD 3.1 and USB 2.0 right USB 3.0 and DP?

The list is relatively short tho :sweat_smile:,

  • both ports can do USB 3.1 Gen 1 and thatā€™s it, no PD or display
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@tbe great work here, I just have a couple questions: is their any hope of PD or is the circuitry too big for the expansion card. Anyway to better color match your expansion card to the OEM ones? and have you worked out rough pricing for these yet?

Does ā€œno PDā€ refer to no PD charging of the laptop or no PD charging of an accessory (like a phone), or no to both? :joy:

If no PD charging of an accessory, will it charge an accessory at up to 5V 3A under the USB C spec? (I think this is correct)

@gaben
It doesnā€™t support PD in both directions, you can charge things on the ports but at a maximum current of 1.5A and at 5V, thatā€™s how the ports are configured (it also doesnā€™t advertise itself as battery charging capable to connected devices). So it charges them but at a lower rate.
Since itā€™s powered by one USB-C port on the laptop that can provide 3A I donā€™t think itā€™s clever to allow the whole 3A on one hub-port when you can plug in two things (and the hub itself also uses some power).

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You can only pull 1.5A without a PD controller.

Hm, seems you are right, I did read somewhere it can provide 3A but havenā€™t thought that might be PD :thinking:.
I havenā€™t measured what it is actually willing to give but the port says itā€™s 1.5A capable.

Edit: It provides around 2A before the OCP trips. So I probably have to go into implementing a PD-IC for that. There are luckily relatively inexpensive chips out there.

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It would be awesome if it could pull 10V and then split 5V 5A for each split but I have no idea how hard that is because it would need to be in series and it would need to manage to swap 10V into 5V if something is unplugged, which can cause a disconnect of the 2nd thing plugged in.

The Framework Laptop will only provide 5v. Laptop ports are just not meant to be a high-power supply.

Framework laptop USB ports support Power delivery.

They support USB PD input, not high-power output.

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Iā€™d want 1, no hesitation. Charge what theyā€™re worth, donā€™t sell yourself short.

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Iā€™d say worry about PD later ā€¦ Maybe a gen 2 addition?

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I second that. If you want PD, youā€™re better off using a powerbank or a USB power supply nowadays.

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