Yes, this was an Alltrax controller (communicating at 9600 Baud 8N1) if I remember correctly.
Curious @Fraoch , do you use FTDI because the drivers are good? I guess the Arduino USB to serial drivers are not very professional 
Yes, much better than Prolific drivers. There has been so much counterfeiting of the Prolific chips that the drivers end up blacklisting legitimate chips and rendering them non-functional. Much easier to go with FTDI who donāt have this issue and keep their drivers up to date too.
I was replying to a comment suggesting a battery level indicator expansion card and explaining why it is basically impossible
Iām not saying a USB to RS232 is undoable. It is perfectly doable. Whether the RS232 can fit comfortable onto one, however, I do not think so.
There are also serial ports that are hard-wired to motherboard resources (perhaps to the chipset). Exactly how that works, I do not know. But there are things called āhardware serialā that are much faster (and much lower latency)
Something similar to magsafe connector would be interesting
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@Brenton_Ferullo
Search for Magsafe - there are a lot of conversations about the topic and at least two people here who have done it. One is a very nice design.
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I am one of those people 
Check this thread for the most complete solution:
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KVM expansion card with vga or hdmi in and usb out.
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Just some random ideas. Sorry if some of these were mentioned before already (I havenāt read all posts in detail):
- Arduino-like chip with some leds and gpio pins
- Wireless game controller with small battery
- Thinkpad-like mouse nipple with actual left- and right mouse buttons. (for whatever reason the designers of the Framework forgot the mouse buttons around the touchpad).
- NFC
- Hardware random number generator
- Killer USB (or maybe not)
- IOT sensors
- Tiny foldable wireless mouse
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Just a note, there are ābuttonsā for the touch padā¦ The lower edge of it is click able. So not forgotten, just not the implementation some like.
I too prefer separate buttons, but am getting used to how it is anyway.
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Wow I would love to see both of these, even though I donāt think Iād actually use them all that much
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Some more ideas:
- Beer bottle opener
- Powerfull vibrator. Or call it a haptic feedback engine if you want
- USB-C connector with built-in current and voltage meter
- Smoke detector
- Atomic clock
- Extremely loud buzzer. Can maybe even be used together with motion sensors as an anti-theft alarm
- Gyroscope sensors to use your entire framework as a handheld gaming controller
- Geigercounter
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Definitely niche. I love em.
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Nice! Way to think outside the lines!
Hmmmā¦
Flip it over, spin it around, and use expansion cards with joycons and dpads sticking out the bottom(/top)?
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Maybe want an external screen for that.
I also have a really great idea! Iām sure Iāve posted it somewhere around hereā¦
Definitely. I was envisioning holding the laptop as a large handheld controller, in a spacious environment, probably with a big screen display
What about packing a AI accelerator in one. I believe Coral has both a PCIe and a USB chip and from a birds eye view the power consumption doesnāt seam like it would be a major concern.
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Air monitor with VOC, pressure, humidity, temperature, PM2.5 sensors. PM2.5 could be hard to squeeze in there but the others should be easy.
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RS232 (inverted levels) and serial (TTL levels)
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GPS + IMU + Barometer
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ESP32 with some sort of recessed but standardized connector that exposed SPI, I2C pins
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Google Coral +1
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Motor. One on the left and one on the right. Plug wheels in and the laptop should be able to drive itself around! Have a current limiting thing to prevent it from damaging the USB port if the wheel gets stuck.
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I like it! But 4 of 'em. Unless you want the front of the laptop draggingā¦
Teeny tiny motors, maybe even with a small turning radius.
FrameBot!!
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