Hi all! I’ve been looking to upgrade my Laptop 13 and decided it would be a worthwhile idea to create a NAS out of my old board, I’m going to be basing most of my case off of https://www.printables.com/model/176903-framework-pc-mainboard-case-w-vesa-mount
and designing the rest myself, I’ve been looking to use this for SATA drive breakout: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09N34NKT1/?coliid=I3A6PQCFK2A2AS&colid=MMZCO20KTZVT&psc=1&ref_=list_c_wl_lv_ov_lig_dp_it
However I’m having some issues figuring out how to power it, I’d prefer to not use another power supply and run it all off of the USB-C power. Keeping that in mind, would it be possible to use the battery connector to power the drives. I’ll keep updating on the design of the case but any help and commentary is appreciated!!
-Rax
EDIT 06/14/23 I’m planning on using an 1135G7 board
The power at the battery connector would be unregulated and vary with state of charge. You’re talking about with a battery connected or no? If no, there probably will be no power at the battery connector. Laptop batteries are smart & motherboards communicate with them to be sure they are healthy. Without a battery present, the mainboard will very likely not send any power. Now, Framework being as open as it is, you might potentially be able to mod the embedded controller firmware to provide power anyway.
I’m not planning to use a battery for this project, I’ll test the pins to see if they’re live without a battery connected, I doubt ill be able to get anything with my multimeter though
Wrong direction, that one makes a pd power-supply put out a specific voltage (very useful if you want to charge a non pd laptop with a pd psu or power something taking 20v but probably not what you want to do here).
I think I’ll use this for internal HDD mounts, I’m working through my first draft design right now for the case I’ll send pictures before I send it to print.
may have found a fix finally for the power issues CRImier has built an input cover shim to make it a usb a port, so naturally i could use a usb adapter and power breakout to theoretically finally power the drives. will keep working on the case.
As long as you are only using it for data and don’t mind only having usb2 speeds that is kinda ok, don’t really see how that fixes your power issues though.
Drawing any amount of power from that port sounds like a really bad idea though and limiting yourself to usb2 speeds is also a bit sad for a nas that is otherwise as overpowered as this one.
Finally finished first revision for the 3d Printed Case Design. While the above mentioned Usb Shim couldnt possibly power 6 3.5" HDD, im back to the drawing board on how to get a 12V rail from some connector. ive figure ill use TrueNas Core as the OS, Running RAID 5 Across 6 4TB drives. The OS will boot from a 256GB usb-c Expansion card from the framework marketplace and my other planned expansion cards are; Ethernet(Ofc), Usb-c For power and possibly either a USB A or one expansion bay will be sacrificed for their 20V rail. I plan to have a front facing usb-a anyway underneath the power button button. all of my planned associated components are accessable through that same GitHub repo.
oh good- the power map describes it as specifically 5-20v. i was worried i would have to get a buck converter to step 20v to 12v but it seems it should be fine anyway
That’s just the acceptable voltage for the connector’s Vbus contacts. That’s saying that it’s tested for that voltage. The datasheet you linked is just for the specs of the physical connector. It’s not saying that 20v will be present.
USB-C starts off with 5v on the Vbus power pins, then if the device is USB PD power supply it can change the voltage on those pins provided the device connected to it properly requests that & it supports the voltage and current requested.
Iirc the Framework usb ports are not USB PD power supply out ports. They provide only 5v and won’t provide more. This is normal for computer USB-C ports. Their purpose is not to be a supply for a lot of power.
according to Reddit - Dive into anything
people have done 12v to usbc for small 18w applications by soldering the 12v molex to a car charger, i found a pd car charger that can do 100W, theoretically as long as my soldering is clean and covered this should be safe and a good solution. @MJ1 let me know if theres anything wrong with this.