Josh Cook's dual USB-C expansion card

Unfortunately, you cannot modifiy a poll after 2 or 5mn so… Sorry my friend

@Josh_Cook I might have missed something earlier, but am I understanding that the design is only partly, or almost not at all, your direct hands-on-keyboard design, and you’ve essentially consulted with a 3rd party to complete the design? And that’s why it has to be closed, because the 3rd party doesn’t want the design specs/etc out there?

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I believe this is correct. The chip is under NDA, so Josh can not share too many details.

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I’d love to see double dongle hider board/adaptor. I have 2 micro dongles but for USB-A connector. I’d love to hide them in one case.

As for current splitter discussion I’d take 3.

The more we learn about what the splitters may be capable of, I may want to order another one. The support list of this module keeps getting better and better.

Fitting two USB-A dongles in one Expansion card, plus the required USB hub would be too much.

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Not even sideways? They don’t have to poke out to hide two “micro” dongles. They could also be offset and opposite to each other if that saves space. Altho this is fast getting into custom made per person territory

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USB-A receptacles are quite large, when you’re talking about the room inside an expansion card. Two of them, plus the USB-C plug, a USB hub chip, and room for two dongles held inside the expansion card, even nano dongles, I don’t see enough room when trying to lay that out on the board.

Maybe if you could find a mid-mount receptacle that doesn’t have mounting pins at the sides. For a hand-made DIY card you could hack the mounting pins off. But that’s too janky for something produced for sale, plus the extra labor on each card.

Nevertheless, someone did it.

Yes, I saw that, notice I posted in that thread. That would be a janky DIY way like I mentioned. No one is going to want to do that much labor if producing cards for sale. And that one broke in the process of trying to squeeze it in.

You can see that mid-mount PCB receptacles, which normally have side mounting pins, wouldn’t fit.

Dongles are usually just usb2 and you can get some extremely small usb2 hub chips that need very few small external components. If you are cool with skinning the dongles you gain even more space.

Hell if one the dongles was usb3 (which isn’t very likely) you could even just split the port and have a fully passive adapter XD.

Of course, some hardware expert could do a way better job if he builds it from scratch by putting everything on a pcb, but what he did imho works as a proof of concept that it’s technically possible to fit a hub and two USB-A ports into a normal sized expansion card.

Yeah, remove all casings, you don’t even need a board, take off the outside of the usb a, cut it 2mm short, solder onto a small usb2 hub board as daughter board. You needn’t do the whole dual usb a connector on board thing. I would buy a single L shaped board that’s just a usb hub chip and 8 solderable pads for such a project (I’m really bad at doing projects, so don’t tell me to plan this board… But I may buy one if I had wireless stuff. I only have wired so that’s why I ordered the dual type C

You could also go even further, in my t480s I did a builtin unifying receiver by using the usb port for the smartcard reader.

For the framework I am kinda eyeing the usb port on the fingerprint reader but I am waiting till replacements are easier to get to mess with that. (and the unifying receiver uses power all the time and doesn’t suspend right)

If it’s compatible with usbpd charging and thunderbolt on at least one of the port I’d love one.

Not Thunderbolt, it’s USB 3.2 10 Gbps only.

Does do USB-PD EPR, so will support full 240W charging of the Framework. I don’t recall if it’s from 1 of the 2 ports, or either of the 2 ports.

Update email sent out, nothing much to report on, but if you did not receive it, let me know.

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Was just going to come to post kudos to @Josh_Cook that an email was sent out, even if not much new info. But it’s something FAR too many projects, much larger than this, for a lot more money, don’t do regularly.

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Thanks for the update Josh! Glad there is a lot of interest in this project.

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are preorders still open for this project? definitely interested in getting more USB C ports on my framework 13!

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