Dual USB-C Expansion Card

[Daniel-L]

Same, give.

[Josh_Cook]

@tbe

I think they would be at least triple of that before taxes including assembly without making any profit, plus the case (at least in small volume quantities). Also I do have absolutely no experience with producing things in higher volumes.
But there’s room for optimisation and things can most likely be simplified a little… You could also probably ditch the dedicated ESD-protection and rely on the IC’s built-in protection but I did rather add it because the cards are probably transported flying around in the laptop-bag.

Just going to pop this in, I personally wouldn’t pay $60 minimum for a dual USB C board.

[Jonathan_Haas]

@Josh_Cook

I personally wouldn’t pay $60 minimum for a dual USB C board.

I think $60 would be very reasonable for something that is essentially handmade with a custom design in a small production run. It’s okay if you don’t want to buy it, but if the price had been calculated as by a freelance artist or engineer, where you calculate your time and want to make a profit, it would probably be much more expensive.

[ATi]

There’s just one pressing issue for me, before I can place my order:
Did you test your card in regards of power leakage yet?
This thread made me aware of this issue…:

Passifying the USB-A Card

I read a lot about how the USB-A cards cause additional power-draw even when no device is plugged in so I modified a card so it only uses power when a device is plugged into its USB-A port. The Card signals to the main board that it is plugged in by having a 5.1k resistor pull-down to GND. [top] I started my mod by first isolating the shield of the USB-A socket by de-soldering the 4 tabs. This will isolate it from GND unless a shielded USB plug is inserted. [bottom] The next step is to re…

…just need to make sure, because I value battery life and therefore power efficiency.

[Nich_Trimble]

@ATi

Did you test your card in regards of power leakage yet?

Was asked a couple days ago:

@tbe

The pure idle, so only power connected, is around 2mA, so about 10mW. I’m not sure tho how much power it draws when it’s connected and does its stuff.

[tbe]

@ATi

Did you test your card in regards of power leakage yet?
This thread made me aware of this issue…:

Well one thing is how much the hub itself draws, the other is how much more the whole system draws because there’s something connected to the port. I did only test the hub’s power consumption in idle so far, to test it under load I’ll have to get some additional connectors and test that but that’s on the roadmap. To measure the whole system’s consumption there’s probably a little more involved.

[ATi]

@tbe

Well one thing is how much the hub itself draws, the other is how much more the whole system draws because there’s something connected to the port. I did only test the hub’s power consumption in idle so far, to test it under load I’ll have to get some additional connectors and test that but that’s on the roadmap. To measure the whole system’s consumption there’s probably a little more involved.

Sorry, looks like I missed that one. I was mostly worried about the idle power consumption. I guess 10mWh shouldn’t be of much concern, so count me in.

[Raxtus3106]

@tbe

My goal is to get a quote for a tiny production run of maybe 50 units and hope they can be reasonably priced (and hope someone buys them ).

ill take 3 personally, quick question, does the spacing happen to match up with the spacing on macbooks? there are a lot of accessories there that use 2 usb3 type c ports to work and itd be really sick if those could work on a framework.

[Nils]

@tbe

The pure idle, so only power connected, is around 2mA, so about 10mW. I’m not sure tho how much power it draws when it’s connected and does its stuff.

It would be interesting to know how you tested this. Is that the difference in battery depletion rate when plugged in to a framework laptop vs. the same laptop without that card plugged in (probably for cleanest result: remove all other expansion cards, or at least make sure they’re USB-C – it’s pretty clear that the power usage that expansion cards can cause is not necessarily additive (they can prevent system from going to deeper idle states and if two cards do that then the penalty is not incurred twice)).

Similarly, and perhaps more importantly, what effect does the card have on the depletion rate when the system is in s2idle or deep (or perhaps even hibernation).

To get results that most directly reflect what people probably care about, you can take the measurements from the charge of the battery (just monitor over something like 30 minutes or so and divide the difference by the time elapsed). On linux you’d use /sys/class/power_supply/BAT1/charge_now. On windows there is undoubtedly a similar readout. It might be in funny units like μAh, but conversion is straightforward and for percentage changes the unit isn’t even important.

[GroundCrazyMae]

I would imagine a USB C meter you could buy off of Amazon and a USB C M to F extension. Plug the extension in to the laptop, plug the meter into the extension … then plug the card into the meter…

[Ahmed_Charles]

Are you still open to posting the design files?

Great work, I just spent a few hours reading the USB7252C datasheet and got half way before realizing you got it to work using the USB5744!

[tbe]

@Ahmed_Charles

Are you still open to posting the design files?

Yes, as soon as they are a little beautified and have a little documentation added .

@Ahmed_Charles

USB7252C

I thought about that one too, but since it’s even more advanced and I didn’t have any experience with high speed designs so far (and it uses like triple the PCB area), I thought I’d better go for the simpler one .
The other chips I use are the UTC2000 as USB-C port controller, the UCS2114 for power distribution and an ADP2230 voltage regulator for the hub IC.

[Ahmed_Charles]

@tbe

Yes, as soon as they are a little beautified and have a little documentation added .

Great, I’m interested to take a look. I’m also not experienced at all with hardware design.

@tbe

The other chips I use are the UTC2000 as USB-C port controller, the UCS2114 for power distribution and an ADP2230 voltage regulator for the hub IC.

Thanks, I was curious about those.

What’s the connector between the boards?

[tbe]

@Ahmed_Charles

What’s the connector between the boards?

These are Hirose BM24-10DS/2-0.35V(53) and the mating part is BM24-10DP/2-0.35V(53).

[Ahmed_Charles]

Wow, I’ve never seen those before. Apparently they have the BM28 rated for USB4.0 and 5A of current, and it’s 0.2mm thinner.

Actually, doesn’t Framework use one of these for the top cover connector? Well, obviously a longer one.

[Nathan_Wolf]

Truly fantastic! I find that I am often running out of ports on my Framework 13. Generally, I need more USB-A ports but I can use a hub, I suppose. I totally understand the limitations you are bumping into with adding PD and alt-mode for displays. Still, an incredibly useful device.

I am curious, how much more circuitry would it require to get PD?

[tbe]

For those who are interested, I did upload a few design- and schematic-files here:

USB_HUB_PCB

Feel free to review them .

The source files will follow the next few days (most likely on Github) .

Edit: Just noticed that someone changed the topic and removed the “mockup” .

[ATi]

@tbe

For those who are interested, I did upload a few design- and schematic-files here:

Microsoft OneDrive

Wow, like a pro… or do you actually happen to be one?

[qemu-system-x86_64]

This project is a lot more complicated than I thought.

[tbe]

@ATi

Wow, like a pro… or do you actually happen to be one?

Thanks, but no, I’m only doing this as a hobby … But I’m probably a little more pro than before . Also I tried to make it nice and understandable when others look at it .

@qemu-system-x86_64

This project is a lot more complicated than I thought.

Actually it is also much more complicated than I thought when I started .