
Raspberry Pi passes CE and FCC regulations - ukdm
http://www.geek.com/articles/chips/raspberry-pi-passes-ce-and-fcc-regulations-2012049/
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msielski
Source: <http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/978>

I didn't see anyone mention how much the process costs. Does anyone have any
experience with this?

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excuse-me
It depends on how much time in the test chamber you need and how many retests.
It can be many $10k-$100K. But since you can't really test until you have a
production PCB layout and then you might have to move tracks or add
caps/inductors/ground planes - the costs of a redesign are normally much much
higher than the testing

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tesseract
This is why you sometimes see, for example, a device that is designed to
accommodate RF shielding but the shield is not installed. It's cheaper to
design the shield and then omit it in production if the tests happen to pass
without it, than it is to risk failing a test and have to go back and redesign
with better shielding.

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shabble
From the source[1]:

 _The Raspberry Pi had to pass radiated and conducted emissions and immunity
tests in a variety of configurations (a single run can take hours), and was
subjected to electrostatic discharge (ESD) testing to establish its robustness
to being rubbed on a cat. It’s a long process, involving a scary padded room
full of blue cones, turntables that rise and fall on demand, and a thing that
looks a lot like a television aerial crossed with Cthulhu._

As someone who's looked into getting a substantially similar device CE-marked,
getting it all done inside a week is pretty heroic.

[1] <http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/978>

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AUmrysh
I've always wondered what sort of devices would actually break the FCC
regulations on interference. I'd imagine the only things that might do that
are radio devices and jammers. Does anyone have experience with such devices?

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sophacles
I presume those regulations exist for a few reasons:

1) In any wireless device, it is not hard to imagine a bug causing problems

2) In any electronic device carrying oscillating currents, there is EM
emission, therefore it is possible for unintended leakage on bad frequencies
(e.g. this trace is just the right length to be a broadcast antenna at
frequency Y, given normal modes of operation.

3) Some devices may individually not cause problems, even though they are low
power emissions on certain bands, but cumulatively they may cause signal
degradation in those bands.

4) Having and enforcing them forces engineers to ensure they are met up front,
resulting in better, nicer playing devices to begin with, as it is cheaper to
engineer it right, than to deal with the consequences of doing it poorly.

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Retric
It's also something of a hold over from larger electric devices. A poorly
designed laptop can mess with your local radio reception and networking
equipment, but a poorly designed 50KW electric motor can disrupt radio
transmission over a much larger area.

