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!
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.
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.
What I want to see from such a power bank:
References: ISDT PB40, Goal Zero Sherpa 100AC v2
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.
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.
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.
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.
Most integrated bd powerbank chips are a single inductor design, that makes them very space and cost effective but also causes them to only be able to do one type of dc -dc conversion at a time. Ususally either charge itself, charge one device at whatever voltage it wants or charge multiple at 5v.
So for that feature set you would probably have to put it together from less integrated components, which is totally possible but is a lot more expensive, bulky and requires a lot more work.
They probably cost a lot less than that.
Hey for anyone else still really interested in the Powerbank Concept?
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What I would prefer instead is probably a 18650 based power bank, that would allow you to easily swap cells when they where down.
However, if this was something that we could use to reuse older batteries, I would be interested for sure. However, this is going to require a BMC made especially for it, as this resides on the mainboard now.
That already exists in a million shapes, sizes and capabilities.
Really? My many attempts at finding have not found them. Would you be able to link a view?
There are several levels, there are countless variations within those:
The hard part isn’t finding them but separating the good ones from the bad ones.
Exactly what I have been looking for. Just was kind of hoping there was a company in Germany or the US (for example) that was making a bit more polished of a product.
That’s a bit of a dilemma, consumers aren’t supposed to have naked cells in the first place so it is understandable no one makes a consumer product like that.
Also the hot-swappable ones I know of are all 5v only so no fast charging or charging a laptop at anywhere near useful speeds with those.
Yea, this is the reason why it would be nice if Framework made one. But I would very much understand if they didn’t. You can get people filling it with dangerous counterfeit 18650s like “UltraFire 5000mAh” cells that they found somewhere and then try to blame FW when it goes badly.