Comment by ErrantX | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ErrantX | Hacker News Reader

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> With a makerbot, a raspberry Pi, an arduino and a shelf full of components

From recent experience working on a hardware side-project: these are extremely cool and useful development/indie tools. But when you get to the stage of large scale production we are still lacking easy entry.

I've been working on an XBEE home automation project intended to be run from a Rasp Pi "server" (but designed to run from anything that can boot linux and has GPIO). It's looks great, has a nice enclosure and is something any hobbiest could get working with the right plug and play bits.

But.

Packaging this for mainstream, where a user can simply buy "black boxes" and connect them up is tough. Circuit design and fabrication on any scale requires both skill (i.e. in designing the layout - I am an Electronic Engineer but of the solder-stuff-together ilk rather than CAD) Admittedly places such as Batchpcb etc. make prototyping a lot easier, but the hurdles you mention are still there in many forms.

The maker/hacker collective is very well serviced nowadays. Next we need someone to disrupt the small-scale development arena: off hand, a community of PCB designers/hackers available to make bespoke PCB layout which links into a batch production system would rock! I've hacked together my prototypes, but have minimal confidence they will work first time :)

Plus... a lot of these companies are side-stepping CE / FCC certifications by clinging to the "we only sell to 'developers'." When you want to sell to non-DIY consumers, I'm not so sure this is an option anymore -- especially for projects like home automation where there are serious safety concerns (fire and electrocution!).

I've never gone through that process. Anyone know ballpark costs for certifications?

The way we got a CE certification for our product was by hacking the system. It turns out that the way it works is that some legal entity of your own choice puts a CE-approved sticker on the product and can then be held responsible if the product doesn't meet the regulations laid forth in the directive that deals with whatever your product was (In our case the machine directive).

Of course the way it's meant to work is that your company hires an approval company that knows a lot about certifications, tests the product and then approves it knowing that they're on the hook if it doesn't meet requirements and regulations.

Nowhere does it say that the approving company can't be the same company as the one making the product, so basically we bought a few CE stickers put them on the product and it was approved. By us.

Someone downvoted you probably because they disagree with this practice. All I can say is, thank you for sharing. +1

The Wikipedia entry on CE certification says:

* The product may be placed on the market only if it complies with the provisions of all applicable directives and if the conformity assessment procedure has been carried out accordingly.

* If stipulated in the directive(s), an authorized third party (Notified Body) must be involved in the conformity assessment procedure.

I'm not sure if the machine directive stipulates it, but "authorized third party" seems to imply that the manufacturer can't perform the certification themselves.

Even if you can count yourself as the approving company, did you make sure that your product complies with all the provisions? Or were you taking advantage of some loophole somewhere to skip the entire process?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CE_marking

EDIT: I see that you mentioned this was 15 years ago, so I'm mostly curious for historical reasons.

If stipulated in the directive(s), an authorized third party (Notified Body) must be involved in the conformity assessment procedure.

The "If stipulated" part seems to be the key. Below your quotes in the wikipedia entry there is a section that covers self-certification. While it doesn't list the directives comprehensively, the steps there do seem to indicate that self-certification is not unanticipated.

It's not really "Hacking the system" - it is more than acceptable for a company to self certify so long as you are happy with the documentation you collect from the component manufactures - it's just that you assume all the risk if you are fund to be in breach of the unifying directives (the legals that sit behind the legislation).

One of the reasons the test houses exist is that not everyone wants to assume the responsibility of self certification and so they outsource it to experts in the test industry.

The most important thing to make sure, regardless of the route you choose, is to always have your certifications and technical documents to hand should one of the monitoring bodies ask for it

Well. In terms of technical difficulty CEcertification is not ridiculous. However it does require not-insignificant amounts of time (writing the documentation) and money (certification).

Our recent projects through the FCC were about $5-6k for a single product, and around 1-2 week turnaround time.

Granted, we have intentional radiators (like wifi radios, cellular modems) in our products so it may be more expensive. YMMV of course.

Edit: with the comment by thomaslangston, I should clarify that the included radios already had their own FCC certifications; this was just Part 15 for the whole device.

I have read somewhere, that using pre-certified parts (wifi, boards, etc.) can dramatically streamline that process. But I have not done this personally so treat this advice as urban myth until you find further verification.

On the "we only sell to 'developers'" angle, there was an interesting talk that addressed this--apparent myth--at the recent Open Hardware Summit.

"Agency Compliance and You: An Introduction for Small Manufacturers of OSHW" -- <http://summit.oshwa.org/agency-compliance-and-you-an-introdu...;

Slides: <http://summit.oshwa.org/schedule/oshws_presentation_fcc/>;

They don't seem to have the edited video online yet but you can look at the schedule <http://summit.oshwa.org/schedule/>; to find the session in the recorded live stream: <http://www.ustream.tv/channel/ohs2012>;

Turns out the presenter also has a SparkFun tutorial on the topic: "The FCC and Open Source Hardware " <http://www.sparkfun.com/tutorials/398>;

circuits.io is working on an interesting solution:

http://blog.circuits.io/post/34159982502/in-this-video-karel...

I've got further using that tonight than I got in about 2 weeks learning Eagle. Thank you! A great project.

>>we are still lacking easy entry

I give you, the Open Pandora project - a bunch of open-source hackers who are spearheading the hardware rennaissance and showing everyone, along the way, how to do it - and not do it (also: volcano):

http://openpandora.org

One day, probably soon, there will be books written about this project. It is an awesome thing - the device itself, the people involved (EvilDragon and his merry band VERSUS Craigix' Reality Distortion Field [really, he has one!]), and the whole community. The Open Pandora Community is a very, very, very fertile y-combinator with proven track record of delivering, within its own realm of course, much value.

So, check it out, yo. Open Pandora .. 2.0 .. could be a YC project? Or .. the inevitable spinoffs? (The Open Pandora is old enough now that there will soon be splinter factions establishing new product, btw..)

I'll do layout for money, and I have experience getting stuff manufactured. Feel free to contact me about it.

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