clicky spring tray thing for phones that have Samsung Dex for people that already have the phone and don’t need a laptop that’s more than a chrome book and its end ups being plug and play
I’m interested in the expanded battery options. TSA has a limit of 100Wh on laptop batteries, so I’m hoping that with a battery expansion I can bring the laptop’s capacity up to or beyond this 100 limit. I’m not an electrical engineer, but I’d be interested in developing an open battery expansion module that uses 18650’s, allowing someone to have as much battery capacity as they’re willing to carry. Personally, I’m willing to carry a lot. My previous laptop was 13 pounds.
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They probably won’t go beyond the limit. They would get known for it & it would cause problems for Framework owners. TSA is not known for being the most intelligent and reasonable bunch. Good luck convincing the one you’re dealing with that “Actually only Frameworks of a certain configuration are illegal to fly with! Mine is totally ok, trust me!”
Yea no, I really hope they do not go over the limit. For everyone’s sake.
You can’t just pop out the expansion bay in a second. The connector has two screws, and it seems to require removing the keyboard to access them.
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Oh I definitely don’t expect them going beyond the limit. Up-to is even questionable. I meant this more in relation to my temptations towards a custom implementation. Either way, I’m looking forward to hearing more about it 
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It will be interesting to see how they handle it.
I expect we’ll get something like a 97Wh as standard and the expansion bay battery choice is in accordance with these TSA requirements.
Also, we shouldn’t have to wait long - battery blog post will likely hit within the next 7 days, perhaps even today.
update: 85Wh battery
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Came here to make the same update. Honestly it’s higher than I expected, I’d be quite happy with a 85Wh battery pre-expansion bay additions.
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this thread seems relevant to link here : Screwdriver expansion card
(there’s the suggestion, files, testing, for several designs, in the thread.)
but late, but maybe it’s of intrest still.
How about an expansion bay with a couple of expansion card slots?
I don’t know if this is possible but it would make sense to be.
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More expansion card slots compatible with official expansion cards with a second built-in battery.
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All you can really get there is usb-only ports. The expansion bay connector doesn’t have display port (unless you also put a gpu in there).
But on the bright side you could have a lot of usb ports XD
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How about stuffing some super slim subwoofers or NIC with a half-dozen managed 10-gig ports for field operations?
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- bass module for even better sound quality. That’d be nice
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My new laptop is from 2012, one reason being the real docking station. If you know where, you could drill screw holes through it, so you could fasten it to the table. That way, the laptop could be attached to the table as well, which I really want in a future use case (home office in a camping vehicle). So I would suggest to provide attachment points at the corners. Add the usual slots for expansion cards including for power delivery. The question I have is how well the laptop itself would deal with the forces during normal driving, given that the expansion module is attached with only 2 screws?
I would just use a couple of velcro strips, one going east-west, and one going north-south across the laptop. You can’t drive and use the laptop at the same time …
It is not about using while driving, true, but space is valuable in that setting, so I want to make best use of it with minimal work. Having everything firmly attached to the desk means I could fold it up e.g. for transit without needing to move stuff first. It also means I do not need to reserve space elsewhere, including while driving.
Velcro is not fit for purpose. I need it to be strong enough obviously, but that means pulling it off exerts as much force as it can resist on the surface it is glued to, so now I have to make sure that material needs to withstand that without tearing, buckling or what have you. Even worse, velcro degrades with use, so I need margins.
Also remember that virtually all laptops have some sort of rubber feet, and in the case of the FW 16, these are rubber strips running from side to side, and the expansion module protrudes deeper than the rest of the underside. For velcro strips north to south, that limits their length, but a docking station could make use of that for better stability.
If such a docking station were to be designed, the mounting holes would add negligible cost and should not impede any user in any way, hence my suggestion to include them.
Stability aside, attaching the laptop by just dropping it on the station, and releasing it with the press of a button is just a bit of quality of life. Granted, the difference is larger when there is not just a single USB-C for all peripherals and power. Still, in my view, that sort of expansion module is absolutely worth it.
That way of doing is dead, probably because of the insane amount of internal volume and especially z-height they used. I am sure they’d still do it because that way if it still was viable as they could get away with selling the corpos completely new incompatible docking stations every couple generations XD.
Seems to work quite well on the ISS. Holds up quite well to normal vibration and shaking around but comes off pretty easily by pulling from one side. Obviously you’d need to make sure you have a mating surface that touches only flat no ventilate parts of the bottom with velcro and leaves the ventilated bits room to breathe but if you can maintain a camper vehicle that should be well within your capabilities.
If you don’t need to close it while docked and really don’t like the velcro idea you could relatively easily design some claws that’ll hold onto the laptop.Probably even with a button that releases them.
The ISS is not really a good measure, the attachment needs only to prevent their laptops from floating in space. That does not really change even while maneuvering, which is in the milli-g regime at most.
The thought had crossed my mind, that would be a good enough solution indeed. Since I need to redesign to lid anyway to make the FW 16 usuable for me in the first place, I could even leave a gap under the lid for the claws. I would just prefer to buy, that would be better on all metrics.
Sure, I can see the point with a classic laptop. But when you have the modularity, it would be a viable option from a technical perspective. I mean, some choose the expansion shell, which leaves a lot of volume unused.
I always thought of that as no more of an issue as incompatible internal parts. But Framework specifically go out of their way to maintain compatibility across generations, that surely goes for the bay as well.
It also needs to hold whenever the russians decide to ram it with a soyuz again XD
But seriously I would not discard the velcro option so lightly it has a good chance of working ad would even isolate the vibrations slightly.
Having the dock connector and mounting so far back would add a pretty insane lever arm to it so not sure the expansion bay mounting is actually strong enough for the whole laptop to be held from there. Especially if there are vibrations involved.
You could probably have some combination of a claw holding down the front and locking down in the back but then you may as well just go full claw and actually be able to use the expansion bay for more useful stuff.
To an extent, in a lot of cases they could have had much broader compatibility with little effort but there was no incentive for them to do so, what are you gonna do? Not buy the docking station for your corpobook?
As far as docking goes thank god thunderbolt and usb-c mostly standardized that with a little bit of proprietary fuckery sprinked in.
Well, while I am not going velcro, but the location where you would apply it got me thinking that I could attach (screw/glue) a flat metal latch (not sure if that term is even correct) in each corner, and have an external locking mechanism poke through them, which would be moved by a lever which in turn is moved by plugging the cable in or out. So thank you very much for your input.
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