The Nano 2 gets warm, for sure, but when it’s charging the Framework Laptop it doesn’t get alarmingly hot. Transistors are on a completely different scale of acceptable heat than the human hand, but I’ve never gotten burned by it, merely warmed. Like holding a cup of fresh tea that’s sat out for a couple minutes.
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So my dell power brick (the built-in USB-C cable) bite the dust.
To Dell’s credit, the cable have a built-in LED at the connector end, which come at the cost of being non-removable.
Guess what – I’ll get one from framework!
Do you guys actually make money off that? Although $50 is quite a tag for a 60W power adapter. Usually they come around $40 or below
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I’ve actually been working on something to do just that, feed it up to 40 volts at 3 amps (theoretical due to heat) and it will be able to negotiate PD and regulate it down to whatever is needed. I will more than likely just have pin headers broken out for people to create adapters for whatever niche connector and also have models with the standard DC jack.
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Hi given the knowledge clearly abundant here, can some clarify if the laptop can be charged via a direct connection to a standard 12V battery / (15V when conneted to solar input)
Via one of the USB C expansion cards as is.
Thanks
What does the solar power port do? Is it USB PD?
Without it being USB PD, no, it cannot charge the Framework laptop.
Without USB PD negotiation, the Framework laptop can take 5V @ 3A, which is the highest capacity a “dumb” (non PD) charger can output. The Framework laptop cannot accept 12V at all, and will only accept 15V if a PD negotiation occurs first. If you fed it 12V or 15V without any PD negotiation you’d blow something or discover whether the USB ports have any sort of power protection (resettable fuse?)
The device needs to be a USB PD power supply in order to use voltages higher than 5V.
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Thanks for the reply. I see that as reasonable but I don’t see why 12V applied to the USB C port from a battery would be any different from 12V supplied by a PD protocol.
Clearly something about the PD negotiation and what it actually does is an issue.
I’d better just do some research.
Thanks
I note this
12V isn’t applied with USB PD 2.0/3.X (check the link).
I’m not an electrical engineer but USB applies 5V first, then PD negotiation occurs, then 9V, 15V, 20V etc. is applied once the power supply receives confirmation using the PD protocol that the end device will accept it. If you were to just apply any voltage other than 5V at the negotiation stage, who knows what the results would be…
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USB-C have a complicated handshake process.
Basically, the moment you plug your charger in, your charger tells the computer the (different) voltages (and amperage) it can operate at, while the computer reports the voltages that it want. Then the computer will tell the power supply to start sending power to the line (and apparently there is mechanics to compensate for voltage drop along the line)
There might be inaccuracies above, but it’s quite advanced. You can even charge one laptop with another (via USB PD), and switch roles when one is plugged in (and the other is not)
So if you want to hook up a 12V source (be it battery, a industrial power supply, etc) you need at least some circuitry to tell the laptop that this is a 12V source and can supply (what amount of current)
My suggestion (of power pins) intend on bypass the USB section and feed power directly to the power circuit of the board, which takes the internal battery power (between 11.1 and 12.4V) and distribute it across the system, so as long as I can feed clean 12V to the pin the board will run. The idea is that because many industrial applications (monitor, robot controllers, phones, routers) use 12V as source, so it will be easier to integrate the motherboard (to a system) because I just need to find ways to feed it 12V and not worry about a unsightly USB-C brick dangling around.
It will, also, improve (quality of life) of users wishing to run the motherboard standalone, as they don’t need to occupy a USB-C port.
In theory, you can just feed 12V to the current battery connector, but because modern batteries have a management circuitry built in (that tells the board the temperature, calculate amount of charge left in it, sense current, etc) I don’t think it will work
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That is exactly what my module is designed for.
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Hi Josh
If it’s not too intrusive maybe you could detail, at some point exactly how you are doing this. My electronic skills are ancient, valves and resistors that could be juggled.
Still I’m up to buying a new soldering iron and magnifier etc. 
So I’m hoping to have an extension card that can take a raw 11V to 16V max range and power the laptop etc.
All the best.
Theoretically you could give it up to 40 volts and it should be able to regulate it to whichever PD profile is closest and whatever the device requests, this will not step up only step down.
I can do PD profiles 5V/3A 9V/3A 12V/3A 15V3A 20V3A.
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Said module already exist.
The problem is that almost all of these modules do step-down only, so you can only do, say, 15V when the input is higher than 15V and 20V when the inout is higher than 20V.
However because how USB PD can (at least, in theory) support anywhere between 5-20V, having a lower voltage usually don’t cause any problems.
Dell have made a similar module, except it also do 20V and it look a bit nicer.
Unfortunately this product no longer exists. It was incredibly cool when it exists.
Fortunately I had DIYed one by (basically sticking that Jacobspart board) onto a Dell barrel jack (from a spare charging port of a Dell laptop). The Dell brick only do 19V but the laptop doesn’t seem to complain.
Make it into a expansion card? no. It’s much more useful as a standalone item (because you can charge other things with it). Also the circuitry is quite large (caps, the inductor, etc) and probably won’t fit.
Alternatively you can get one of these and just cut the car plug off and modify it.
https://www.amazon.com/CASIMY-Vehicle-Adapter-Chromebook-Cigarette/dp/B09NLWZCZ2/
This one probably include a step-up and a step-down, hence the large volume.
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Hi
I already have something similar as in a car adapter 12V to PD3/QC3/PPS which is small
I’m trying to get my head around why I can’t apply 12V direct.
My electronic and engineering skills are waning.
I get that there’s a negotiation in the computer and if I understand right it looks for 5V and then can accept higher.
The battery is 16V so the 12V has to be stepped up unless the 4 individual cells are charged separately, which I Imagine is the case.
So the only reason to supply more that 5V is to pass more power (W= V x I(A) ) down the thin cables. Which means the computer’s internals convert 9V/12V/15V/20V to a nominal 5V(4.4V) to charge the cells.
So my query is how can I or why can’t I get the computer just to accept 12V and do all the work?
the battery is charged serially (which means it will need to be stepped up) and regulated parallelly. However, this is done by a battery-charging circuitry (something a operating system have no control over)
Mostly correct. Framework is one of the very few laptops that can charge over 5V, if I didn’t remember incorrectly.
Except it’s not really the cables but the (rather fragile) contacts in the USB-C connector.
Because … it’s not intended this way.
If you absolutely dig in, you can probably find the power rail where the input voltage is fed into the battery charging circuit (or the power regulating circuit), and feed it 12V (or some similar voltage). The system will probably freak out (because it did not detect a port from which it is being charged with but the battery circuit is working)
USB PD as mentioned have the handshake (which must be done in order for a device to legitimately sink non-5V current), so even if you feed 12V to the port the computer won’t know what to do. Is the USB trying to sink current? Is it a USB device error? What kind of device is attached to it? Is the orientation of the connector wrong? so on and so forth.
If anything, it should trip the internal (resettable) fuse and you get a “USB device not working” error. If that 12V doesn’t just get dumped to the 5V rail and fry everything.
On a device with a regular DC jack (and even those have a signal pin to detect the ratings of chargers) you can just supply (whatever the rating is, usually around 19V) DC to the port (as long as you can source the current) and the computer will happily charge away. Maybe it will throw a “unknown AC adapter attached” error (because the charger sense didnt detect anything) but that’s about it.
It make sense from a device manufacturer or connection protocol perspective to put on checks (e.g. power supply rating check, USB device type and power requirements) so the computer will not cause harm to anything (e.g. overloading the charger, frying peripherals) even though the peripheral might have its own protection (e.g. overcurrent/overtemp protection, fuses) while being able to work with them (regulate the speed of charging, providing 20V to other attached laptops when their battery level is low, provide 5V to attached phones and 9Vs to quick-charge enabled tablets) that, well, require some “smart-ness” for proper function.
If you want, you can crack (or mod) the car charger to take 12V DC (through a barrel jack or something convenient). This way you can have the charger convert (likely a buck or a DC boost + switcher) do 5V for your other devices.
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The for the info. The car charger’s fine with nominal 12 to 24.
It’s that I have a 12V ring main that runs most things, including my 19V LG screen ??
It looks like I will end up forgetting an expansion card that can take 12V and just buy a few more car type adapters.
Thanks again
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I might be in the minority here, but I would prefer an ungrounded design with folding prongs.
I don’t see a huge benefit to grounding the unit since it’s made of plastic.
I do see a huge drawback, which is that in many countries (Japan, Taiwan, etc.) earthed outlets are not commonly available.
I realize you can use different cables and adapters to defeat the ground, but I think apple has a much smarter design here (ground only if you want it).
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Grounding is important for the laptop itself and not for the power supply. Otherwise you as a user ground the laptop (through the touchpad in the worst case), which can create erratic inputs. There are several reports of such problems with crappy ungrounded power supplies on the Framework laptop and also on other brands.
If the Framework laptop comes to these markets, Framework can surely figure something out by shipping a special version of these power supplies.
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But the AC and DC side should be isolated, so it’s not a big safety issue unless I’m missing something regarding the laptop’s operating voltage?
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No, GROUND is always connected in anything with mains power, It isn’t technically isolated through the PSU if you look at grounding. When charging the main body needs to be referenced to ground meaning that they should be at the same power level.
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Macbooks have shipped with no Earth pin for most of their laptop chargers since forever and none suffer from any input issues. Grounding isn’t the issue — it’s how well the charger is built. I’ve run my Thinkpad and now my Framework off of RavPower ungrounded USB-C adapters for almost a decade now, without any issues.