at what stage do the FCC Part 15 rules kick in?

Hello Coder27

Do you have a real name - do you ever have a nice thought ?

The RPiF doesn't have enough boards to satisfy UK and Eropean demand yet so they don't need to worry about FCC for a little while.

I'm no expert on Law, let alone US law, but I don't think it is necessary to have all the certification in place to discuss a future product.

Michael Kellett

I think they have been doing some marketing in the US, which would mean they do need to worry about the FCC.

From the FCC OET Bulletin 62,

(guidance on regulations)

It is the act of selling or leasing, offering to sell or lease, or importing a digital device

that has not gone through the appropriate FCC equipment authorization procedure that

is a violation of the Commission's rules and federal law.

47 U.S.C. 302(b)

Since RPiF are working on FCC certification and Farnell won't sell untill its in place they are not offering to sell a non authorized part, just offering to sell one they haven't quite made enough of yet.

So - answer my (implied) question - why do you hide behind an alias ?

Michael Kellett

Please don't attack other forum users here, Michael.  There are thousands of users on this Element 14 forum with aliases.  That reference to "hiding" was pretty nasty and uncalled for.

@ Morgaine,

You misunderstand me, it was not an attack, just a question.

And it was posted along with  a researched response to the point raised.

Michael Kellett

@coder27: I'm sure there's a period between product announcements and full-on sales where things get a little fuzzy with industry certifications.  After all, many companies announce their products way ahead of actual release with certifications, and that can be considered marketting too.  At least RS and Farnell are handling it properly now, which is a jolly good thing since these boards are going into homes everywhere, not just into the hands of engineers and radio amateurs.

I sincerely hope that the testing that RS and Farnell are doing is to address more than the CE certification and "UK/European" demand.  I'm sure that at least some of the CE certification testing is common with the FCC testing.

Are we being faced with another hurdle for the Foundation/RS/Farnell/Newark that needs to be overcome before we will ever see an RPi?  I would hope that RS and Farnell know through the sales of other products what rules need to be followed to get new products to consumers.  As they sell to North & South America, Asia, Australia, I would hope that they know what testing needs to be done to allow sales there.

Maybe someone from Farnell could tell us exactly what compliance testing is being done and where will the certification allow sales to be done?

Kevin, I posted these two paragraphs below on the Rpi blog about industrial certifications:

===

A product range with which it makes sense to compare Raspberry Pi for certification purposes is Arduino, as Arduino boards are produced in very large quantities and the company is similarly based in Europe (Italy).

The leaflets accompanying my Arduinos say that the boards have RoHS, CE, and FCC (Class B) certifications (as well as something called Life Zero Impact).  Since the Raspberry Pi is substantially more consumer-oriented than an Arduino, it should be expected to have at least that level of certification.

===

Both Farnell and RS sell Arduinos, and the certification issues must be pretty similar for both products, so I expect them to do for Raspberry Pi as other EU companies are doing for similar products that these distributors are selling.  They've both been in this business for ages (I used both Farnell and RS throughout the 80's), and you can be certain that they are total experts at certifications and legal requirements.

Morgaine.

Kevin & All

We are very aware that the talk is all of CE compliance, (sorry that you may feel disregarded), but I've been around long enough to know FCC is needed (in fact when it was the only certification game in town) so it's very firmly in the script.  There is a lot of commonality and we can share data between.  The important thing is that we do all the baseline tests.  We expect FCC compliance to closely follow CE.

We are in full swing with the pre-compliance (some info on my blog) - will keep you all posted.

Pete

Morgaine,

If you wish to compare an Arduino to an RPi for regulatory purposes, then you should know that Arduinos sold in the US for, oh, probably 4 or 5 years, maybe more, before they got their CE/FCC certification. The first Arduino with certification was about Sept of 2010. I own Arduinos back to 2006 or 2007 and they were not the first models sold.