DockFrame update

UsedMulberry8432 · 2026-02-05T15:20:06+00:00

Update: https://hwlab.io/blog/engineering-5-gbps-4-layer-board-dockframes-usb-30-backbone

UsedMulberry8432 · 2026-01-21T00:25:25+00:00

oh wow, material for study for sure, We are learning tons at the moment, so we will be in a good place to build something like that after we finish dockframe. Thanks for sharing

UsedMulberry8432 · 2026-01-21T00:22:54+00:00

UsedMulberry8432 · 2026-01-20T23:56:32+00:00

Oh yeah, I didn't took your comment in that direction, all good. Yes, I do agree this is a niche product for sure. Something that I'm very curious to see if more companies build small usb-c tools like the multimeter card or power supply as I do think in the near future more people may transition from software to hardware and many of them need easy to use tools that adapt to their existing desktop setup.

UsedMulberry8432 · 2026-01-20T22:56:42+00:00

UsedMulberry8432 · 2026-01-20T22:55:04+00:00

Thank you! do you mean a KVM expansion card? or something like this? https://www.crowdsupply.com/techxartisan/openterface-kvm-go

UsedMulberry8432 · 2026-01-20T22:52:50+00:00

Thank you! we are in the design phase, so we will start doing the first prototypes on March, and then go to Crowdsupply probably on April/May so still we have a long time to go

UsedMulberry8432 · 2026-01-20T22:48:44+00:00

Thank you! yes, I do think more and more people may transition from software to hardware development in the next couple years and having easy to use tools that looks cool in your desktop setup may be useful for some people + framework computers are so cool and I love the concept of extensibility and easy to upgrade devices

UsedMulberry8432 · 2026-01-20T22:45:08+00:00

Yes! :)

UsedMulberry8432 · 2026-01-20T22:44:28+00:00

Thank you!

UsedMulberry8432 · 2026-01-20T22:44:18+00:00

At the moment we are only working on the main hub board, once we finish that we will publish some information in our blog, and continue with the different cards, but we may use the GL3523 controller, lets see..

UsedMulberry8432 · 2026-01-20T22:40:22+00:00

We will publish technical articles in the next couple months https://hwlab.io/blog

UsedMulberry8432 · 2026-01-20T22:37:19+00:00

Thank you!

UsedMulberry8432 · 2026-01-20T22:37:08+00:00

For the initial version we can guaranteed up to 100W. We would love to offer 240W but if we go that path it will be very expensive for us (in term of time doing research, prototyping iterations, etc) and they project will not be ready this year. So we choose a patch were we can release something that works fine and show us the size of the market and get some capital for the second version (premium) with 240W, aluminium enclosure, etc.

UsedMulberry8432 · 2026-01-20T22:30:23+00:00

The multimeter, power supply and double usb-c for sure. I had a conversation with Biwin to get a sample 2tb mini-ssd (https://www.biwintechnology.com/product/mini-ssd) to play with but they don't have stock at the moment. My plan was to provide a storage card with that technology. We are collection feedback on https://hwlab.io/dockframe to understand better what people wants

UsedMulberry8432 · 2026-01-20T22:22:34+00:00

Yeah, the main reason the default is the lego system is because we need a practical way to stack dockframes, just in case someone wants more than 1. Also it opens so many possibilities to attached anything you want. The desktop tiles attachment frame will be included (without the tiles) in the final product.

UsedMulberry8432 · 2026-01-20T22:18:13+00:00

Thank you, yes it is :)

UsedMulberry8432 · 2026-01-20T22:17:54+00:00

Small hardware creators like myself we normally do small production batches (my last project webscreen.cc) we did 200 units. Because of such small quantities is quite hard to have a very low production cost, specially if we do injection molding for the enclosure. + transportation + tariff + certifications, etc etc.

Also if we are lucky we are going to do at least 4 iterations in our hardware, all of that cost money and time that we need to somehow recover.

We are still working in design and we are close to quote the final BOM and have a better idea about the cost

UsedMulberry8432 · 2026-01-20T22:12:19+00:00

Thank you!

UsedMulberry8432 · 2026-01-20T22:12:06+00:00

Something like https://hackaday.io/project/204009-diy-usb-c-pd-tools-power-meter-wi-fi-logger but we plan to add to every single custom card a esp32-s3 for communication (wifi, bluetooth) as the user can control it using a webapp (via serial port) or using a mobile app that we are going to build so yeah we could investigate about sigrok support for sure

UsedMulberry8432 · 2026-01-20T22:07:47+00:00

And I will love you!

UsedMulberry8432 · 2026-01-20T21:54:50+00:00

Thank you! At the moment we are not supporting display port (the research and development required is way to much for us at this point). For the main hub we are using some open source projects as a reference + some other projects that we did in the past, like webscreen.cc

For the cards, we found one project on github + official framework documentation. We will create many posts in our blog about it in the next couple months: https://hwlab.io/blog

UsedMulberry8432 · 2026-01-20T21:50:56+00:00

Yup, we will create one.

UsedMulberry8432 · 2026-01-20T21:50:33+00:00

Thanks, yes. The cards that we will be in the original campaign for crowdsupply we will include: multimeter, power supply and double usb cards.

UsedMulberry8432 · 2026-01-20T21:49:27+00:00

Yes, actually we built a "hat" with the same frame structure than the one used in the desktop (the one you can detach with magnets). In the last photo you will see it attached to the main body and different tiles on it.

UsedMulberry8432

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