https://twitter.com/FrameworkPuter/status/1686461742409449473
Alas, if only I were at LTX to add “battery case” to the table
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Some excellent suggestions.
Mountain bike, hair drier, microwave, garage door, flamethrower, shoes, bunnies
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I need a FrameThrower 
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IIRC Tesla/SpaceX sell them, they’re referred to as ‘temperature enhancement devices’
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Keeping the topic alive! I am waiting for the battery case and will buy it along with the bigger battery for my framework 11gen as soon as they are both available for purchase. Hurray for the lowered shipping costs in the EU!
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So, how’s this concept going to come out and play? An amazing idea to upgrade batteries while keeping the older one as a backup. This is the best cost-effective setup for people that travel. How portable is this going to be?
Question is this is still a concept? What kind of work needs to be done to make this happen? Is it a partnership with cooler master? When is this expected? Will this be in demand so that framework still profits from this?
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Depends on how big a pocket you have I suppose, you know the size of the battery so what’s the question again?
I’m sure I can slide it in a large inner jacket pocket 
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I’m eagerly looking forward to seeing the design files for this. It would actually be quite useful for me: it seems like it would be thin enough that it would be ideal for a briefcase or next to a laptop, for example.
It sounded like they weren’t necessarily planning on selling it, but were going to release designs for others to make them.
Now that the Framework 16 is announced, I wonder if its Expansion Bay interface will support a pseudo-PD standard that could accommodate a battery pack. The power section of the pinout is currently “TODO,” so there is still hope for a VBUS/CC1/CC2!
Proof of concept on Github
36m26s into video
No idea about that, but the Github pinout clearly shows that there are some pins where you can backfeed any voltage between 7 and 20 Volts back into the laptop, which will be supposedly used to power the laptop and charge the battery. It seems obvious that Framework will sell a battery expansion module.
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I am in need of a battery bank that can accept power delivery while simultaneously outputting 12v power delivery with a clean shutoff when depleted. This would make it an amazing UPS for modems, routers, etc using a trigger cable.
As far as I know, no one has made such a product.
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What I want to see from such a power bank:
- TWO USB-C ports minimum: one simply isn’t enough, even in the context of a power bank, and two is required for it to be used like a conventional UPS
- 12V PDO support - optional per PD2.0+ spec, but it’s still useful for many devices like the ones @Thomas_Suckow mentioned
- optional hardware switches to dictate the role of either USB-C port as [input-only] or [output-only] or [input/output]
- optional hardware setting for charge level limit
- optional hidden pogo contacts/pins to enable daisy-chaining multiple units together
References: ISDT PB40, Goal Zero Sherpa 100AC v2
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I just want to add to what @jcpb said: if you connect both power input(s) and output(s) to the USB-C ports, it should automatically route power directly from the input(s) to the output(s), bypassing the battery, as much as possible to preserve the batteries. If the output(s) need more power than then input(s) can provide, it should combine the power from the input(s) and only what’s needed from the batteries. If the input(s) can provide more than the output(s) need, the output(s) should take their share from the input(s) first and any leftover power should be used to charge the batteries. I don’t know if this is even possible as I’ve never seen a battery pack that could actually do that before but if it could be implemented that would be amazing
That’s not quite what he said:
we’re also releasing documentation today on GitHub to enable reuse of the display and Battery modules we’ve prepared a proof of concept of a battery enclosure that actually reuses the framework laptop battery so you can take that old battery if you’re doing a battery upgrade drop it into this case and be able to use it as a USBC power bank to power a phone a laptop or really any other device
I was also a bit confused by this until I listened again. The documentation on the battery and display was indeed added to the FrameworkComputer/Framework-Laptop-13 repository. He then says they’ve “prepared a proof of concept”, but doesn’t say that they’ve released it, and I can’t find it on Github or anywhere else.
I had initially thought that the way the battery pack was described, they weren’t planning on selling it, but were planning on releasing the design, as they did previously with the mainboard case (prior to the partnership one they announced). Listening again, however, I think the implication was that they had prepared a proof of concept, to be able to say that reuse was possible, but don’t currently plan to release the design.
With that said, glancing at the documentation on the battery, it seems like it might not actually be that hard to build something. It’s a 4s1p lithium ion battery, and the pinout is documented. As a rough concept, it seems like one of the common USB-C two-way power modules, usually used with 18650/21700 4s1p configurations, might actually work. However, a custom board would be needed to make something as thin as they presented.
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Depends, If you want @jcpb s feature set it could get somewhat complicated but if you just wanted a basic 100/65w power bank you could straight up hook up an off the shelve powerbank board up to the battery, It allready has it’s built in bms so don’t need that. Getting absic powerbank functionality would be as easy as hooking it up to something like an ip2368 board and putting a case around it. A cusom board with the battery connector on there would of course be a bit nicter though. I am personally more fond of the ip5389 based boards but I have not found one that doesn’t come with a built in bms and that would probably not work because you don’t get access to the individual cells.
If you want pass-through charging or ups mode it’s going to get quite a bit more complicated.
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Bonus point if it support 20V output modes! (20V @ 1.5A/2.25A/3.25A)
Bigger bonus if it support USB hub to whatever that is connected to USB-C.
Dedicated charging port and power out port. No mixing in/out because laptops also have bi-directional power ports; make things very confusing.
You can do that with a 12V USB PD “sniffer” on anything that supports USB PD.
I would assume Framework would be interested in selling a powerbank themselves since they said they still have a big stock of the old batteries. A powerbank would be a good way to help getting the old stock out.
+1 and +1 , but not sure how much the hub possibility would increase difficulty and price.
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For simplcity, let’s assume that it’s a power bank with a USB-C in, a USB-C out, and at least one USB-As.
(Dell make one of those. It support 5/9/12/15/20V charging, also 5/9/12/15/20V delivery as well as USB hub).
Difficulty:
You need to be able to supply two, different voltages at the same time, and maybe in addition receive a third different voltage – you need to be able to deliver whatever the USB-C device ask for, accept whatever the USB-C input is, and also deliver 5V to USB-A devices.
You also need to attach a USB hub to the USB-C (outgoing connection), which is going to act as a hub for the USB-As. If you only have one USB-A device, you can simply connect the data pins together. But otherwise you need a hub.
I have their non-USB-C version (PW7015L), which inputs and outputs barrel jacks. For that it’s simpler, since barrel jack is about 19.5V, and the output barrel can just be linked to the input (to be about 19.5V); you only need a 5V circuit (and two “switch”, to prevent overcurrent on the USB-As), and a 19.5V circuit.
In theory you can just have all three (USB-C version) feed and/or drain from VBatt, but doing this when the battery is full is bad, so you also need a bypass.
These are not easy – Dell charge $150 for this 65WH (max output 65W) USB-C power bank for a reason. They charge $111 for the barrel-jack version. The cells probably only cost you $75.
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