Framework Laptop Cupholder Expansion Card | Hacker News Reader

Framework Laptop Cupholder Expansion Card

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375 pointssohkamyung115 comments

I have no idea how or why this is on HN, but we did print a couple of them to test out, and they work! It is a goofy idea, but there are genuinely some scenarios where it would be useful. We’re thankful to have attracted such a clever and creative community.

Presumably because it's funny, whimsical, and imaginative.

Hacker News occasionally still values hacking

Where is the cynism I’m looking for?

Someone say that this is pointless since you can do the same thing by utilizing existing tools like your table!

A table, by definition, is a surface upon which a cup can be placed. A cup holder on the other hand envelops the cup and prevents any sliding movement. This makes a cup holder ideal in moving vehicles.

cupholders seem to have fallen behind starbucks law of cup capacity, and now serve to hold the bottom of the cup in place while the rest of the cup freely rolls/pitches around the center of gravity of the coffee. This seems to be much more effective in tipping.

I really wish cars had more modular docking systems for electronics, drinks, snacks and sunglasses.

Yeah, but then the base module will cost 2000$ (or 20$/month), the cup holder attachment is another 200$ and the manufacturer will sent assassin squads against anyone daring to create compatible attachments or even the printable designs for them...

> cupholders seem to have fallen behind starbucks law of cup capacity

What you're looking for is a "cup holder expander" or "cup holder adapter". Much like the cigarette lighter became a power delivery standard because it's there, so too has the cup holder become a standard, although admittedly quite a bit more nascent.

the Ford Maverick did this an even provides templates for creating your own 3d prints that are compatible with their docking system

https://www.ford.com/support/how-tos/owner-resources/vehicle...

https://www.thedrive.com/news/44276/ford-releases-blueprint-...

It’s also confusing to call it a printable cup holder given “CUPS” on Linux. Probably trademark infringement. Blatant clickbait.

ChatGPT 4.0 will make all forms of coffee holders obsolete in 6 months anyway.

You mean it'll carry the coffee for us?

More like it’ll do all the thinking for us so we can go back to sleep. Coffee itself is obsolete.

It's going to drink all the coffee because it's just like a human brain and needs the caffeine to function decently.

Turns out caffeine was all that was in the way of AGI.

Hate when I wake up in the morning and ChatGPT keeps meowing at me to feed it. It's like it's never eaten before in its life.

I immediately thought of, maybe you could use it to keep various cables out the way: anyone who does a lot of embedded work knows how busy the desk can get with a debug probe + serial + power + usb device under test, etc, etc

Good lord yes. Though I'd probably want a more dedicated cable organizer, with multiple separated brackets for organization and cutouts for removing and adding and reorganizing cables without unplugging them.

> I have no idea how or why this is on HN

That's easy! It was submitted, and subsequently upvoted.

Framework is doing brilliant work. They create reusable computer formats that anyone can hack against. Strongly considering a Framework 13 as my next computer.

- Expansion cards: https://github.com/FrameworkComputer/ExpansionCards

- Expansion bay: https://github.com/FrameworkComputer/ExpansionBay

- Input modules: https://github.com/FrameworkComputer/inputmodule-rs

Can anyone report if the battery life issues have been fixed, and to what degree. This is what kept me from switching...

They improved it as part of the latest refresh: https://frame.work/blog/whats-new-in-this-years-framework-la...

Battery life better than my apple device for sure - though it's an old MacBook air

The new Apple benchmark will be their M1 / M2 laptops, I don't think anything tops that at this point.

Dunno, I'm less and less interested in apple devices these days, I've got one on the shelf, I guess we can test it in a year or two

Running Fedora and doing web browsing + light coding, I get around 5 hours of battery. That doesn't feel great, but it's rarely an actual problem for my use patterns.

Besides that, I love the laptop.

The new AMD models that are coming out later this year seem very promising in that regard, but no reviews are out as of yet.

They are offering larger batteries than before, probably time to revisit

On Linux this was solved for me by using `tlp` and I check usage once in a while with powertop. It's going to be not so great out of the box (~5-6 hours) but after some basic tweaks I can pull 10. Mostly the fixes are about getting the CPU to scale down into a low power state.

I've never managed to get sleep or hibernate to work correctly, so aside from the fact that I have to shut the thing all the way down if I want to leave it unplugged overnight, or just always leave it plugged in, it's fine.

I think it might have to do with my using full-disk encryption, but I've been unwilling to go all the way through attempting a fresh install to fix.

So it’s like a desktop with a hinge. I recently moved to a MacBook after being a win/Linux user my whole life and the thing I love the most is the feeling that if I close the lid, all is going to be ok and I can immediately open it back up and it won’t freak out or I won’t find it’s still working on sleeping.

Being at an airport and closing it, putting it in the bag, boarding, resuming work. Or relocating at home from table to desk to couch, things you do with a laptop cost you battery and heat with a framework?

YMMV but both my macbooks occasionally display evidence that they were awake while they were asleep (e.g. if i close the hing at 10pm and open it at 8am, it might show 2:14am for a few seconds before catching up, but also they show new unread messages even before connecting to wifi). Weirdly my 2013 macbook is much much better at going to sleep and waking up with nearly the same battery capacity, whereas my 2019 (work laptop) will often run down 15-40% of its battery over the weekend while completely closed.

That's intentional and what Windows Modern Standby is trying to copy, badly.

https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/what-is-power-nap-m...

Have you check your settings? There is one that allows the Mac to wake up to update

Ironically my company issued Macbook is also annoying about this, in the sense that it regularly makes noises or wakes up my monitor when it should be sound asleep.

But my Framework never actually goes all the way to sleep, even when it looks like it has, and I've given up trying to figure out why.

Keep in mind that the 13 doesn't have the expension bay, nor the input modules. I really do want those 2 features, so U am strongly considering the 16", even if it is a little big for my taste.

Same, I would like a Framework 13 with input modules (an ortholinear layout may finally be possible? Also with QMK).

Also, I would rather take a r5 and have increased battery life (I bet the r7 are binned for higher perf and have higher leakage), but they only offered the bigger battery with the r7, last time I looked.

16" is definitely big (I have a desktop and docking station anyway), so I've refrained from ordering for now, hile I decide :|

As much as I like the idea, they don't address their main weakness - low resolution display. They are like a 720p phone - 2256x1504 is somewhat precise but one can clearly see the pixels and switching to 2x mode makes everything huge. Older ASUS ZenBook could do 3300x2200 at the same size for about the same money.

Sure there are manufacturers with higher resolution displays out there, but there is even more that still just run 1080p on these. Its not easy finding an AMD device with more than 1080p or maybe 1920x1200 even today, even on larger screen (15"). So yeah, its not 4k, but its not shabby either.

That seems more like Intel gatekeeping high-end for themselves via some shady background deals with laptop manufacturers. There is no reason why an 8-core Ryzen with Radeon GPU would be limited to these crappy 1080p resolutions.

I had a 720p phone, and it was perfectly fine (I also have a 720p Steam Deck). I guess it depends on what you use it for, as it could be useful for graphics work. On the other hand, I value battery life, and increasing pixel count always had a negative impact.

That's fine, for folks like you Framework should offer the current display. For folks like me they could offer the 3300x2200 option. They offer options on everything but display for some reason.

They would have to buy and stock the panels. Maybe they aren't getting enough requests for a higher res display.

Well you can't hack the firmware :( A baffling decision considering the brilliant work they're doing otherwise. I do not see a reason why they absolutely need to have Intel Boot Guard enabled.

I'm at the point where I'm not even looking for laptops with coreboot OOTB, I just want a good laptop that is not fused to the vendor's keys. I'll port coreboot to it myself.

How about a version that can keep your coffee or tea warm using the power from the USB-C port?

It would be interesting to run the numbers on power use here.

I think you can draw a maximum of 100W via a USB-C port? (Though most laptops would really struggle with that, even when plugged in.)

How much heat does a cup of tea lose per second at eg 20C room temperature and 60C water temperature? (Or whatever you want to keep your beverage at?)

https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/5265/cooling-a-c...

To counteract a 2-centigrade-degree drop per minute, you'd only need 35W to keep 250ml at a constant 85C. (Or 65C if that's where you start it.)

so you could insulate the coffee so it doesn't drop in temperature, induction heating a vacuum flask maybe?

I bet adding a lid substantially decreases the power requirements.

Nit: please use Celsius (and "°C" if you can)

I prefer centigrade over Celsius because it's not named after a person. Also I wanted to be clear that it's a two degree drop, not 2°C.

If you want to be funky with your units, I suggest measuring 'coldness' instead of temperature and expressing it in bit per joule (or more conveniently Gibibyte per nanojoule).

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermodynamic_beta

> Though completely equivalent in conceptual content to temperature, β is generally considered a more fundamental quantity than temperature owing to the phenomenon of negative temperature, in which β is continuous as it crosses zero whereas T has a singularity.[6]

> In addition, β has the advantage of being easier to understand causally: If a small amount of heat is added to a system, β is the increase in entropy divided by the increase in heat. Temperature is difficult to interpret in the same sense, as it is not possible to "Add entropy" to a system except indirectly, by modifying other quantities such as temperature, volume, or number of particles.

The relevant number here is 15W.

In principle USB C goes up to 240W now, but that isn't relevant here.

USB-C power is negotiated, with a full blown two way negotiation if you want more than 5 volts (or to draw more than 3 amps). Framework laptop ports don't support outputting more than 5V or 3A and so will max out at 15W.

That is, this isn't a "struggle" -- because USB-C has negotiated power in general, just because it is possible to build USB-C ports that support 240W doesn't mean that a random port on a battery powered laptop has to support anything close to that.

Can you explain what "negotiated power" means? Never heard of it, maybe the hardware on the receiving end needs to have built-in circuits which signal to the generating device that it can handle a certain voltage?

That’s correct.

The port powers up in the default low power mode, but the attached device can signal that it supports more if the device can provide it.

You want to start off with low power — since starting off with high power could damage devices that don’t support it.

Yes exactly. You plug in the cables and then there's the following conversation:

    Laptop: *Om nom nom, 5 volts, yum!*

    Power supply: Hey, I can do 5 V, 9 V, 15 V and 20 V

    Laptop: I hear ya.
    Laptop: Can I get 20 Volts?

    Power supply: I hear ya.
    Power supply: Here's 20 volts!

You get the idea.

All the way up to whatever the device will accept. Past that, the device rejects the offer from the power supply.

The original spec lists 5 V, 9 V, 15 V and 20 V, with support of for volts being kinda common because that's what cars use so the circuitry support already exists. According to spec, the charger is supposed to support all the voltages lower than it's max, but ofc not everything is spec compliant.

20 Volt @ 5 Amp is 100 watts which was the old maximum power usb-c PD could do. But it turns out that wasn't enough, so they renamed that to be Standard Power Range (SPR) and released when Extended Power Range (EPR). EPR adds adds 28 V, 36 V and 48 V @ 5 Amps, to the spec, for a new maximum of 240 Watts of power.

(Longer desc of the conversation in table 5 in https://www.ti.com/lit/an/slva842/slva842.pdf )

Oh, when I wrote 'struggle' I wasn't referring to the negotiation or USB-C. I was referring to the ability of the rest of the laptop to keep that power flowing, even if they wanted to.

Use a Peltier device and it should be just as easy to reverse it for cooling!

How can you cool without hydraulics?

Thermocouples are solid state electronics that move heat.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermocouple

That article doesn't have anything on the moving of heat, but there's another one on thermoelectric cooling (the Peltier effect): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoelectric_cooling

Get a Joeveo cup, then no need for heaters. It's the world's best travel mug. Its insulation cools the drink to drinking temperature then keeps it there for hours, perfect cup of coffee. Had mine for years, from the original Kickstarter.

https://joeveo.com/

It's the Framework of coffee mugs.

Looks like a run of the mill aluminum air insulated mug. What’s special about this brand?

Website says there's a layer of insulation between the vacuum walls.

I literally hadn't heard of this brand until this comment, but I figured it was worth pointing out that their "layer of insulation" is a bit more complex than it might seem at surface level, being a phase-change insulator.

They claim that it changes phase right around the 63 degC mark (which, again, is claimed to be the sweet spot for where most hot beverages are enjoyed). Therefore, a hot drink will quickly move to that temperature when the poured liquid is above that transition temp (the liquid-phase insulator being a good conductor), and then stay close to it after dropping below the transition point, when the solid insulator re-forms and stops conducting heat well. If true, I think it's a really neat application of high-tech materials science in everyday life.

[1] https://joeveo.com/pages/the-temperfect-mug (see "Details for the Technogeek)

That's not likely to get you a winning mug, if threads complaining any the fake reviews and fake products off Amazon. Better to buy direct if you want a mug that's actually made out of thick enough aluminum to resist breaking, and actually has a vacuum to insulate. Otherwise you'll get one insulated by dirty diapers.

https://www.yeti.com/ would be my preferred vendor for that sort of thing.

Pelican cups have a "sippy lip" on them which is really nice for drinking, feels like a normal cup. It looks like Yeti has partially recessed their lid now, not sure if it's deep enough from the picture. https://www.pelican.com/us/en/products/drinkware

Project Farm did a video comparing insulated water bottles and Yeti didn't perform so hot

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6j1NJkNzwI

I didn't know yeti used old diapers for insulation, but thanks for raising awareness!

In addition to the normal vaccuum insulation layer, it has a layer that does a (constant-temperature) phase change at ~140F. If your drink is hotter than this, energy flows out of the drink, cooling it and liquifying the layer. If you drink is cooler, energy flows into the drink, solidifying the layer.

grep for technogeek [here](https://joeveo.com/pages/the-temperfect-mug)

Just a quick, non-hostile technical nitpick: I don't believe that at any point, energy will actually be flowing back into the drink. If the drink is cooler, the insulator layer will become a significantly worse conductor, preventing heat from flowing outward as well as from the liquid-phase insulator, but thermodynamics/the law of entropy shouldn't really allow for the energy to flow back into the liquid, even when the insulator does re-solidify.

If you open the mug and rapidly cool the drink (eg dropping a few ice cubes in), heat should be flowing back into the drink?

(I mean that's not a crazy notion: if you have any warm mug and fill it with cold stuff, the warm mug will heat up your cold stuff.)

You are right that if you keep your mug closed, there shouldn't be any energy flowing back into your drink.

If you rapidly cool the drink, you're definitely right - energy would flow PCM -> drink. Otherwise, it's semantic if GP is correct. There would be dynamic equilibrium, i.e. flow of thermal energy in both directions, but no true flow from PCM->drink.

The steps would be:

1) Drink > 140, PCM solid

2) energy flows drink -> PCM, drink cools toward 140, PCM liquifies gradually

Then two possibilities:

3a) drink cools to 140-epsilon before PCM liquifies fully

4a) PCM gives energy to drink in dynamic equilibrium, while also losing energy to environment, solidifying

5a) PCM is entirely solid at 140

6a) PCM drops below 140. drink gives energy to PCM and PCM to environment. drink -> PCM thermal conductivity is presumably much higher than PCM -> env, so drink and PCM remain at same temp

3b) PCM liquifies fully before drink hits 140-epsilon

4b) drink and PCM stay at thermal equilibrium (see 6a) while cooling toward 140. energy flows drink -> PCM and PCM -> environment. The former is faster, so the PCM continues liquifying

5b) PCM is entirely liquid at 140. Due to thermal equilibrium, drink is also at 140.

6b) drink stays at 140 while PCM solidifies

7b) see 5a

8b) see 6a

You seem to assume that the PCM encapsulates the drink on all sides. But the cup has a lid, which doesn't have a PCM inside, and which isn't perfectly isolated.

So there will be energy going from the drink to the environment through the lid, which in turn allows energy to flow back from PCM -> drink.

Its „Temperfect insulation“ is most likely a PCM i.e. a phase changing material storing heat in a phase transition. It absorbs or releases heat depending on the outer temperature by means of a physical phase transition (not sure if this is really liquid-solid but perhaps a crystal reconfiguration).

When the "insulator layer" (a phase change material or PCM) is between phases, it can absorb or emit energy without changing temperature.

The drink on the other hand will change temperature as it looses energy.

The drink will lose energy through the lid, leading to a small temperature gradient between the PCM and the drink. This gradient should allow energy to flow back from the PCM into the drink.

Sigh, anywhere I can buy this for my wife and I in Australia? The shipping for 2 cups is $60 USD, and it all totals out to something like $250 AUD which is completely unjustifiable.

Insulated keep cup on display at any cafe is around $15-25 AUD.

Thanks for letting us know, that sounds really cool, I just bought one myself!

The temperature equalizing sounds interesting. I'd try Joeveo out if one happened to be offered by a friend or something, but it'd have to be pretty special to displace my Thermos travel mug. I've been using the same one for 15 years and it still keeps my drink warm for hours.

Lid is tight and leak proof. I trust it inside my pack. The handle and carabiner are essential components too. Handle hangs over bike handlebars, side of canoe or seat, belt. Carabiner does, well it does what carabiners do!

https://imgur.com/a/5f9rMA2 This pic is from 2014. It's lost the rubber base since then but none of its usefulness.

Ah, shucks. They don't ship to Europe :(

"Please note: because of recently-instituted tax collection requirements, we are no longer shipping to the EU or UK—sorry!"

There must be something available in Europe, I remember then-chancellor Rishi Sunak getting some stick for having a £200 heated mug with Bluetooth. Of course, now he's running the place.

There are services in US which will gladly give you an address in US and forward to almost all countries in the world. Search for "us package forwarding"

Oh neat, I didn't know that. Thank you.

A thunderbolt 10GbE nic is basically a hot plate in my experience

Even better would be to direct the laptop's cooling fan exhaust towards the cup, then mine some bitcoin.

I have one of these:

https://amazon.com/dp/B07G9J4745

and set it to 140, for nice warm coffee which it will maintain.

It works well with 24w, so usb-c should have more than enough power.

I saw this on Twitter earlier and the photo somehow gave the slightest sense [1] that the laptop was flexing under some strain.

So I wonder, even if that's not the case here... :-) how much would it take, and what would happen? Would the cupholder break first or would a key cap fly off first?

And what is on the top-10 list of the least-safe 3D-printed laptop accessories?

1. https://twitter.com/FrameworkPuter/status/165310366873094963...

In the shared design and printed out of normal filaments, the cup holder will break long before anything happens to the laptop. The cup holder was tilting slightly because the rails on that printed part need to be tuned a bit to be tighter. I think the design was based on our shared reference design, which we deliberately made slightly loose for printability (under the mistaken assumption that nobody would build something load-bearing using it).

> printed out of normal filaments, the cup holder will break long before anything happens to the laptop

Really? I can see it with PLA, but i thought PETG was supposed to handle it fine (as long as you are not using it with giant glasses filled with liquid). And PETG is pretty much the second most common type of a filament after PLA.

Note: i could be entirely wrong about this, but I was under the impression that this use-case is exactly what PETG is made to handle.

Out of curiosity, could the expansion card slot bear the entire weight of the laptop if it were used to hold the laptop aloft?

Probably, the laptop is not that heavy and there is a good few square centimeters in the slot. If you are have proper support (aluminium or steel) then it should easily hold up the weight. That said, I wouldn't lean or even type on the laptop if it was suspended over an empty space like that. I don't think there would be much resistance to the laptop sliding off the support sideways either.

looks like lens distortion or similar to me

Back in the day, most PCs and laptops came with cupholders. They occupied a drive bay, and when you pushed the button the cupholder would pop out...

I thought that held the coaster AOL sent everyone in the mail.

I used to get ham delivered from mine.

https://youtu.be/RFV4pNuRA0w

I wonder how strong it would be, and how much chance of tipping you might have.

Now a USB-C version that was a phone holder that also charged the phone ...

> Now a USB-C version that was a phone holder that also charged the phone ...

I am abruptly reminded of the PDA that was so small that it synced by fitting into a laptop:

https://hackaday.com/2021/03/11/rex-wasnt-really-a-pda-it-wa...

https://www.paullynch.org/pda/REX/

That is amazing, what a neat idea.

And I'm reminded of the Motorola Atrix and its lapdock.

I always wanted one of those for my Motorola Droid 4.

Nowadays I scratch that itch with the steamdeck, which is actually useful as a standalone computing device connected to normal peripherals

There was something insanely appealing about the REX and related devices. I would love to see someone build a PDA or Tamagotchi-like Expansion Card or Input Module for a Framework Laptop.

And I am reminded of this weird Apple patent where a macbook docks into a display:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2008/01/apple-patents-idiosy...

there's also the purism phone that sort of becomes a laptop:

https://shop.puri.sm/shop/lapdock-kit/

For those wondering, this is a joke from the LTT WAN Show [0]

[0] https://www.youtube.com/live/CSOF8RFrihM?feature=share&t=982...

If you read the description in the link that's exactly there the idea is from!

I was hoping it would have a secondary function as an optical disc drive.

It won't do that but you can use it as a bubble wand.

I wrote a comment a couple of days ago that I want a stationary computer case with 12 5.25 drive bays. Invert the chassis and have a top to bottom air flow.

That way I don't need any USB ports included on the case. I can just pick any I want as a 5.25 bay.

Or maybe 18 how swap 3.5 harddrive bays. Or a memory card reader. Or 3 120mm fans. Or 12 small drawers. Or a cigarette lighter and beverage holder (real thing).

I have an old case that I love, but the front IO is hideously outdated. Expandability like the framework laptop is something we had for tower computers, but we did away with it to make them look nice.

I need a telescopic version to keep 30cm minimum liquid-to-laptop distance.

I'm somewhat surprised not more expansion cards have popped up by now.

it should be a spring wire (like a kids toy tent) or some kind of origami mechanism so it can be pushed away and hidden inside the laptop when not in use, then it'd be very impressive.

the collapsibility of the wires and size adjustment could both be done by joining two wires (1 attached at 1 end, on each side) to each other via a double fisherman's knot or a blood knot sort of arrangement

Indeed, what is any computer without a cup of coffee beside it? This is a great project (and the 3D viewer rocks).

I thought it was going to be a cd-rom drive

I was half expecting a cdrom tray that come out.

Those who know, know.

Lol, gotta love that old free cupholder.

My cupholder stopped coming out!

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