Niche expansion cards

Creators & Developers Expansion Card
86

I am one of those people :slight_smile:

Check this thread for the most complete solution:

4 Likes
87

KVM expansion card with vga or hdmi in and usb out.

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88

Just some random ideas. Sorry if some of these were mentioned before already (I haven’t 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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89

Just a note, there are “buttons” for the touch pad… 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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90

Wow I would love to see both of these, even though I don’t think I’d actually use them all that much

1 Like
91

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
11 Likes
92

Definitely niche. I love em.

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93

Nice! Way to think outside the lines!

94

Hmmm…

Flip it over, spin it around, and use expansion cards with joycons and dpads sticking out the bottom(/top)?

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95

Maybe want an external screen for that.

96

I also have a really great idea! I’m sure I’ve posted it somewhere around here…

97

Definitely. I was envisioning holding the laptop as a large handheld controller, in a spacious environment, probably with a big screen display

98

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 doesn’t seam like it would be a major concern.

7 Likes
99

  • 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.

  • RS232 (inverted levels) and serial (TTL levels)

  • GPS + IMU + Barometer

  • ESP32 with some sort of recessed but standardized connector that exposed SPI, I2C pins

  • Google Coral +1

  • 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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100

I like it! But 4 of 'em. Unless you want the front of the laptop dragging…

Teeny tiny motors, maybe even with a small turning radius.

FrameBot!!

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101

Trouble is the expansion card locations wouldn’t allow 4 wheels to balance well. It’s pretty easy to just stick on some kind of skid surface under the front of the laptop though. Like those furniture skid pads would probably be perfect.

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102

I already have that made, except with a rotary encoder in mind; however, it’s possible to remix it to be a button/LED driver, as it uses the same chip as the pro micro arduino board. The only downside is that I only exposed a limited number of pins.

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103

If you want a really wacky Expansion Card, here you have some:
Emulator-Compatible GBA Link Port
SIM Card Slot

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105

Optane would be nice

106

For anyone requesting a opto isolated USB port I’ve just finished everything for one, isolated power supply with a max current of 100 milliamps. Is both USB-C and USB-A.

3 Likes