if you make the module slightly thicker than the chassis, or have the USB ports low on the card with a very thin cover, you would probably be fine with the way it’s designed. (although you have done more work on Expansion cards than I have, so you would know better)
Can’t you just resistor request 5v from the host and ditch pd for the 2 ports? Otherwise a pd trigger chip it <1$ if the resistor part doesn’t work. you have 3 other ports for power so having to with just 5v seems pretty reasonable to me
Do you need that if you are staying at 5V? Otherwise, just ditch those. No need.
Or just use a chip that supports dual USB-C natively
you found one?
You can for example use this: USB7252C | Microchip Technology. There might also be smaller (BGA-) packages and probably even not publicly available solutions.
The above IC can also handle USB 3.2 Gen 2, but it’s relatively large with 12x12mm (compared to the 7x7mm of the simpler one). The complete PCB area of the expansion boards is 26x30mm, that’s not much given that you not only need the hub chipset but also power supplies, ESD-protection, connectors and of course space to connect them with traces. I’m not sure how many layers you can get on a 0.8mm PCB but I’d guess not more than 8 (for reasonable pricing at least). There are very likely people (and technologies) out there that can manage to make a nearly full-spec hub in that size, but that’s out of my capabilities and skills. I find this challenging enough and I’m doing it purely as a hobby project.
Addressing the (likely) height issue in my current design, I might go the way with a daughter board for the upstream connector (to offset it a little upwards so the downstream-ports move further to the center-line), adding an additional PCB and two board-to-board connectors to the list, but that pushes it further into ‘not likely to become produced in higher quantities’-territory.
Can’t share information on what it is due to an NDA.
Any reliable ETA interval on when it’s out of NDA?
AFAIK, large amount of companies (all tech companies too) do that. Some tech companies even provide an external mechanical keyboard (And I don’t get what kind of money you were made of or job position to run around with laptops in the late 80’s.)
The NDA has no expiry.
What do you expect us to do with that information ?
he’s telling us that such a thing does exist.
I’m also working on a Dual USB-C expansion card, with the chip that is under a NDA, which is why I was stating that it exists.
OH!!!
Alright. Then I hope you can provide some good news at some point.
Good luck!
If it can run FreeDOS there are some cool things you can still do with it.
DON T BUY THIS CRAP x) Was too good to be true !
Doesn t charge AND doesn t work stable when connecting for exemple a USB C cam.
Its a dumb peace of plastic
The “good” it fites in the FW slote, it feel solide (but useless!)
SHipment for a usb module still crazy expensive
At 50€ 2 pass through USb c my dreams of modularity are gone
Anyone selling there usb C module out there?
I’ll try to place orders for my concept/prototype usb-hub-card and the components by the end of the month, I’m curious if it actually works . I have quite some other things to do recently so it doesn’t progress as fast as I’d like it to…
If you want to buy a used module, I can recommend the r/frameworkmarket. If you want a new module without the high shipping cost you can check out
https://frame-parts.square.site/
both of these are unofficial, but both are committed to helping EU customers get framework parts and expansion cards cheaper.
I’d actually love to have a similar thing but for USB-A. That way you wouldn’t have to add display port or charging, and no one would think to use a USB-A port for those purposes anyway.
Just having 4 (max) USB ports seems a bit limiting, with my current laptop for example I need 3x USB-A and 1x USB-C… if I had to connect a display in such a situation on a framework I’d be out of ports. Having a dual USB-A expansion card would be super useful.
Dual USB-A inside the card slot is a little too narrow, the entire slot is only 30mm wide (with some space lost to the sliding rails and the material thickness itself). The reference PCB width is 26mm and a single USB receptacle is 14.5mm wide. Technically a little wider since you need a center mounted one due to the height limitation, the first one I found has a total width of 17mm.
Even a center-mounted USB-C is 11.3mm (total width of the receptacle assembly) wide. You could probably cram two of those in but there would be only very little space for two connected plugs (the ones I have around here are between 11 and ~12.5mm).
That’s why I’m using two regular USB-C-ports and a weird assembly (that hopefully works, I’ll find it out ) in my prototype.
Hey y’all! I’ve been working on a dual USB-C (USB 2.0, no PD) expansion card PCB and only just came across this thread. I’ve got a schematic and a layout, but for now I’d love some feedback on the schematic. It’s built around the Microchip USB2512B hub IC. The schematic is here and the rest of the files are in the same GitHub repo (note that it was made in KiCad 7 and won’t work with version 6–sorry about that). Anyone have feedback on both the design and usefulness of this expansion card?