Dual USB-C Expansion Card

And I would be happy to buy within the EU :slight_smile:

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Any updates for the expansion card?

Also interested in this ā€“ Iā€™d love to get one of these for my laptop so I can connect my mouse and keyboard!

83 posts were split to a new topic: Josh Cookā€™s dual USB-C expansion card

Which links to:
Triple-Screen Laptop DONE RIGHT!

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Hello folks,
Sorry, I have been absent for a while due to various reasons, one of them is having other hobbies too :blush:. This project takes way more effort than I initially thought and I might not have the time, knowledge and resources to make this expansion card an actual product :frowning:. Thanks for all your support and interest in this project it has been quite fun so far and Iā€™ve learned a lot designing this :blush:.

I promised to make the design files public tho, so everyone interested can have a look (and most likely improve it), so the time invested may have some benefit for the community and probably someone can make a product or small production run out of it. Before shelling out 1000s of units Iā€™d recommend building another prototype and run some compliance testing, this is not a production ready design.

The design files are uploaded here: glx-seven/dual-c_expansioncard: This is a prototype of a dual USB-C expansioncard for the Framework-Laptop (github.com)

I might come back to this project and develop it further but I donā€™t have concrete plans or a timeline. In the meantime maybe someone else has interest in having a look or taking it further :blush:.

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:saluting_face:. Thank you for your service. Good luck on your next project.

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On the bright side, it seems weā€™ll eventually get Josh Cookā€™s version of the expansion card in addition of this oneā€™s schematics.

Oh, this is interesting. Havenā€™t followed this one, just Josh Cookā€™s.

Any thoughts on doing a group order of just the PCBs? Iā€™d get a couple, and 3D print up my own cases for them. Iā€™m sure some folks in Joshā€™s thread and this thread might be interested as well.

What are the capabilities? Full 3.2g2 10Gbps speeds on both ports? Any USB-PD?

The ports are both 5GBit, there is a PD controller but it only requests 5V/3A from the laptop so it can provide 5V/1.5A to both ports, charging is not possible.

ā€œJustā€ ordering the boards is not as simple as it seems, thatā€™s part of why I canā€™t continue here (without immense effort).
Also Iā€™m not sure if these can be reliably manufactured for a reasonable price, these are loaded with parts on both sides and the host connector is (I guess) not standard pick-and-place. Also the parts go quite close to the edges of the board, so for my understanding not too great from a DFM perspective.
I did hand assemble the prototype but that took quite a while (but double sided reflow worked better than expected).

Side-note, a friend of mine (that has nothing to do with electronics) said ā€œhow difficult can that be, look at these sandwiched iPhone logic boardsā€. Well yes you can probably do it but not for reasonable costs in like one-off volumes since your standard-assembly line can probably not handle that.

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Ah, too bad about the chip and close to the edges. Yeah, thatā€™s an issue from DFM. And had assembled reflow, yikes. Thatā€™s a lot of work.

And LOL, ā€œhow hard can it beā€. Right.

There are 10G capable and native USB-C hub ICs available from microchip but they have substantially larger packages so Iā€™d say they are even tougher to implement, thatā€™s why I chose the one I got. Thereā€™s also a VIA chip that can apparently handle one PD charging port but it seems you canā€™t just buy that. Also youā€™d have to manage the 20V (or whatever your charger provides) to 5V for the other port plus 3.3V and 1.2V for the USB3 part. Unless you want to stack a few boards on top of each other I guess youā€™ll quickly run out of space.
There might be integrated solutions for that but resources for these seem to be impossible to obtain for non-businesses.

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Thanks for putting as much time and effort into this as you did! I was getting more and more excited as I read along all the updates since I last checked in on this project, I hope someone else is able to take it across the finish line. Good luck in your other hobbies and projects!

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you realize the plug spacing wonā€™t actually let you plug in 2 things at once, right?

If only the input modules are a tad wider ā€¦ or a tad narrower, so you can have 8 rather than 6.
But the full size SD module is here, so I guess it is the perfect size.

yes, but each USB-C plug is larger than a USB-C, right?

Has the rubber bits around it so you can actually grab them

thatā€™s great.

I just wanted to say Iā€™m also interested in buying one of these. Need more ports! I assume it wonā€™t be power-compatible, but thatā€™s fine for me. Just looking for data. Right now the plug I would replace with this is plugged into a USB hub.

hello, I wanted to know any new about this expansion card! I would love to but a dual USB C or dual USB A!

and something like usb A for data and USB C for ideally fully featured(charging and display)? or at least charging?

I havenā€™t been able to find a USB hub chip that supports that.
All chips Iā€™ve seen donā€™t support PD or display.

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