I added a silly LED light to the micro SD card reader - it works as a sleep indicator as well and draws about 7mW. If the Framework is off it turns off. The LED is attached to the relatively large capacitors on the 3.3V rail of the card with a 250 Ohm resistor.
BTW am I the only one that is disappointed that the micro SD card slot isn’t the click-push kind that lets you keep a micro SD card safely inside the adapter permanently?
That looks great!
Nope, I wouldnt enjoy that. But I havent bought it yet, as I have a usb c to sdcard adapter which works just as well.
I am also a bit torn if it is worth it. It draws about 0.3W constantly as well in sleep. I have a USB-A card as an alternative at least.
Maybe I will try adding lights to that next or the USB-C passthroughs. This is not as easy because the voltage can go to 20v so an LDO is needed.
whoa that’s pretty neat! how did you actually do this? did you make a new card or this is a mod on the existing expansion card?
It looks neater than it is in execution 
Took me a couple of minutes - it is really just a mod of the existing card and the power draw is really not enough to hurt sleep runtime much at least compared to the sdcard reader itself - at the very least it signals me that the laptop is sleeping and ought to be shut down properly.
Here is the inside of the reader with the mod applied:
The LED and the SMD resistor are soldered onto each other then i ran magnet wires to 3.3v from one of the caps near that regulator and the shielding for GND. I insulated the board with a bit of tape and applied a dot of lacquer to make sure that there is no short to the case metal. There is normally foam on the side that I removed.
i love the hack. awesome job.
