The efct17 is from 31st July till 6th August if you mean that by “workshops”. 
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the only hurdle we still have to take is the fact that Fairphone itself does not support the use of the expansion port due to FCC (EC as well?) regulations as I have been told by second level support once.
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FCC as in the US Federal Communications Commission? Is the expansion to the US so near in the future?
I guess such certifications are expensive and that would make the price of these little upgrades much higher… 
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I was a bit unprecise. Maybe it was not FCC but CE. I looked at the mails, it states only “certification required for regulatory compliance”. sorry for the confusion. Nonetheless, I hope Fairphone is still pursuing a plan to expand to the us market.
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Hmm, well, my idea would be to create a whole new back cover for the phone using a 3D printer (or similar) that gives you a bit more space to work with, as well as options to securely mount the modules.
As I mentioned earlier, if I had access to a 3D printer I would have done some experiments already. I really hope that my financial situation clears up soon, still waiting on some money, reminds me, have to call my lawyer again and ask what the current status is.
Once I’m fluid I plan to buy a 3D printer on eBay, cheapest one I saw was around 145€, which is amazing when you think about it. (No worries, before I buy anything I’ll research it and see how reviewers think about it.)
In terms of the #efct17 I have to see what my schedule and finances say, in terms of being available around that date. I’m on vacation for like 2 weeks right before the meetup. Gotta get back in to work on the 07. August. (Also would need to find some place to sleep at, food, etc. - Transportation would be easy, using MeinFernBus, cheapest ticket is 17€ to Amsterdam.)
Oh and @jayy, I’m definitely also interested in one of the PCBs. Shoot me a message once you are ready with those.
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I experimented on a really low level with the connector with tape for the Qi-Pad. I kind of secured the tape with the two holes next to the connector simply with the screws on the other side of the connector. The holes going threw to the other side of the connector. I’m not sure what the purpose of the screws is but my phone still works smooth like before.
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Very interesting! Wireless charging is the one thing I really miss the most about the FP2.
Did you make some tests regarding the charging time / current when using the expansion port?
I made a quick test today by connecting a bench power supply (set to 5 V) to the expansion port. The phone indicated that it is charging, but the resulting current was only about 90 mA. This would make it impossible to charge the phone in a reasonable time. Not sure if I did something wrong, but I wouldn’t know what.
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@duke1102 great idea. well you can also use one of the various online 3d printing labs.
and I would surely send you a pcb then, maybe you (or we) can integrate this into the back cover
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@charlie well done hack! I prefer not to change anything too much on the phone so currently I do not use these screws.
@ChuckMorris nope not yet, I will do some measurments. There must be an app for displaying the charging current
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I have made good experience with Ampere (XDA), but unfortunately it is only available from the PlayStore.
Edit: Inspired by this StackOverflow post, I set out to find the charging current in the kernel. The charging current for the FP1 can be found at /sys/devices/platform/mt6320-battery/power_supply/battery/BatteryAverageCurrent.
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Thanks @Stefan, Ampere shows plausible results when charging by the Micro USB port. @jayy and @charlie, would you mind giving it a try when charging by the expansion port?
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Oooh, wonderful!
Have you played around with them yet? I’m obviously still very very interested in a prototype of the PCB. If you can part with one, send me a message what you want for one. Will be glad to beta test it and provide feedback.
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not really, yet. I just played around with one board in the corner and the connections are fine. unfortunatelly I have no time at the moment to go to my workshop due to my daytime work, but will about next week (there’s a holiday). I will separate the boards from the panel then and then do some serious play. after that, I will calc the manufacturing costs and tell you so I can spread these among the community.
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so here are finally some pictures of my debug setup:
you can either drill 1 mm holes into the board (for unknown reasons the manufacturer did not do so) or just connect to the downside. both will work.
here I soldered to wires to the downside. I need only to pins: 3 and 5 (gnd and vcc)
I found the perfect holders for the connector. I make them from wooden toothpicks:
and this is how it looks like after some cutting with the swiss army knife (literally):
it fits quite well underneath the regular back cover and holds in place. if you are worried, use some adhesive insulating tape above it.
here you may see, it does not provide the best current, but still it is working:
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and here is the pinout to the connector. it is as stated before nearly all based on the work of dirkvl: https://github.com/dirkvl/FairPhone
it is a full fledged usb 2.0 port and i am currently tampering with it in other projects, e.g. a memorycard reader and a usb connector. maybe a slideout keyboard would also be an option?
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so, I am thinking of how to distribute these boards to the hackers and makers around here. manufacturing costs per pcb are about 0,55 € so pretty low. I got about 80 to share with you, so what would be an acceptable way to do so? I thought of setting up a small script you can just enter your shipping address, send me manufacturing costs plus shipping and I send it to you as soon as I could, but is there anything as international and easy as paypal but fairer?
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Bank transfer? (20 chars)
SEPA bank transfer or Bitcoin.
Just don’t rely on just bank transfer. For example, UK bank charges for sending money abroad are terrible. If I were to buy something that cost €1 and pay by bank transfer, it would end up costing me around €29 if I didn’t use an intermediary. (Okay, since SEPA this could be done for ~€18 with a lot of hassle, awful exchange rate mark-ups and still the risk that they’d charge the higher cost anyway).