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Open Source Thinkpad T420 Battery Design

github.com

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Re: Open Source Thinkpad T420 Battery Design

#71

Post by jacquesm »

jhanschoo wrote: post #68
jmnicolas wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think this generation had DRM on the batteries. The new ones did and they're not cracked. TIL that there are DRM even on batteries. What a sad state of affairs.

DRM on batteries of expensive electronics seems consumer-friendly to me. Most consumers' experience with battery replacement would be sending it for replacement by a technician. Battery DRM would make it difficult for the consumer to end up with an unsafe battery in their device and pockets.

I've been replacing batteries in electronic gear since I was all of five years old. I think your average consumer would be able to handle it.

Re: Open Source Thinkpad T420 Battery Design

#72

Post by morsch »

jhanschoo wrote: post #68
jmnicolas wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think this generation had DRM on the batteries. The new ones did and they're not cracked. TIL that there are DRM even on batteries. What a sad state of affairs.

DRM on batteries of expensive electronics seems consumer-friendly to me. Most consumers' experience with battery replacement would be sending it for replacement by a technician. Battery DRM would make it difficult for the consumer to end up with an unsafe battery in their device and pockets.

There's an alternate strand of reality where you're arguing for mandated licensing for kitchen utensils.

Re: Open Source Thinkpad T420 Battery Design

#73

Post by spyridonas »

jhanschoo wrote: post #68
jmnicolas wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think this generation had DRM on the batteries. The new ones did and they're not cracked. TIL that there are DRM even on batteries. What a sad state of affairs.

DRM on batteries of expensive electronics seems consumer-friendly to me. Most consumers' experience with battery replacement would be sending it for replacement by a technician. Battery DRM would make it difficult for the consumer to end up with an unsafe battery in their device and pockets.

If the companies where open to repair the technician/end user would say "Hey Apple, i need a battery for the 6S" There's no need for DRM.

Re: Open Source Thinkpad T420 Battery Design

#74

Post by puzzlingcaptcha »

zelly wrote: post #24

It really speaks to how badly innovation has slowed in chip design that a 10+ year old budget laptop is still comptitive hardware

A two-core i7-2620M with max of 8GB RAM? It might suffice for office work but I wouldn't call it competitive.

Re: Open Source Thinkpad T420 Battery Design

#75

Post by jhanschoo »

jacquesm wrote: post #71
jhanschoo wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DRM on batteries of expensive electronics seems consumer-friendly to me. Most consumers' experience with battery replacement would be sending it for replacement by a technician. Battery DRM would make it difficult for the consumer to end up with an unsafe battery in their device and pockets.

I've been replacing batteries in electronic gear since I was all of five years old. I think your average consumer would be able to handle it.

It's no different if you replace it yourself, that's tangential to my point. You'd be sourcing a specialized replacement battery online and there's a risk that the battery you get is an unsafe knockoff.

Re: Open Source Thinkpad T420 Battery Design

#76

Post by john61 »

captainmuon wrote: post #52

This is a cool project, and I love it when somebody "takes back" their hardware a little bit or keeps them useful through hacking instead of throwing it away. But it shows how irrationally our society is set up in some aspects. In an ideal world, you could just send the Lenovo engineer a mail and ask for the firmware source. But the incentives are such that they keep it secret, probably because they make a lot of mon…

This is why my next laptop will be a MNT Reform, you can change the individual cells yourself:

https://www.crowdsupply.com/mnt/reform

Re: Open Source Thinkpad T420 Battery Design

#77

Post by mschuster91 »

Cool project, I wish battery stuff in general was more open-source friendly and not hidden in a wade of obscure datasheets.

What I'd really like to see one day is a web site/an app where one can input a pack voltage and sustained/peak amperage targets and the cell type that is to be used, and it will automa(t/g)ically create a controller schematic / parts list, with full safety features (balancing of all individual batteries, overcurrent/short circuit protection on load side, overtemperature protection on charging side) included.

So, no matter if you're building an e-cig, a drone or a way to power a mobile disco setup without lugging six car starter batteries around, it will always give you a solution that works.

Re: Open Source Thinkpad T420 Battery Design

#78

Post by puzzlingcaptcha »

iam4722202468 wrote: post #3
dividedbyzero wrote: post #2

Apparently those Thinkpads are from 2011-2012, that's old. What do people do with such old devices that makes building a battery from scratch worthwhile?

The T420 is old, but still has some advantages over laptops currently on the market. Up until 2018 many laptops still had dual core cpus like the i7-7500u which are worse than the i7-3840qm that can be put in a T420, and the few currently available laptops that have 1440p displays and quad core cpus are still pretty expensive. Some other reasons people still use the laptop are being able to use coreboot with it and t…

>laptops that have quad core cpus are still pretty expensive

They are really not. If you are after performance on a tight budget, you can get a ThinkPad E14 with 6-core (that's 6 physical cores) Ryzen APU and 16GB of RAM for under 900 dollars [1]. You still get a good quality keyboard and the trackpoint nub if that's your thing (I'm a happy user of an older Thinkpad E485).

https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpad-e-ser...

Re: Open Source Thinkpad T420 Battery Design

#79

Post by jacquesm »

jhanschoo wrote: post #75
jacquesm wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been replacing batteries in electronic gear since I was all of five years old. I think your average consumer would be able to handle it.

It's no different if you replace it yourself, that's tangential to my point. You'd be sourcing a specialized replacement battery online and there's a risk that the battery you get is an unsafe knockoff.

That is a different problem.

I've also been able to buy non-knock off batteries for just about all electronics up to a few years ago when companies decided that soldered in batteries shorten the time-to-landfill of their products improving their revenues.

Seriously: there is no reason why there could not be a standard form factor for battery cells. If we can do hard drives, CPUs and RAM I'm sure we can do batteries too.

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