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Comment by goodbyegti | Hacker News Reader

It's absurdly expensive, even more so the modules. Looking at the BT module, the BLE112 can be purchased for $15 in quantities of 1. So you pay $35 for a small PCB, some pin headers and probably a wrapper around a UART.

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As written above, everything related to radio has huge upfront costs in certifications. These costs are once-applicable, so if you're making a million-unit BT dongle, then the certification costs per device are fractions of cents. Here with thousand-unit series, the cost per device is massively higher.

Isn't the BLE112 already certified? Or does integrating it into a product require you to get the entire product certified?

In Europe, the one who imports the device must submit a certification document for the device... so even if you just stick already-approved products together you have to do a complete recertification. This, sadly, also includes selling a "Raspberry Pi computer" with you as distributor packing a Pi and a Wifi stick in a case. Only if you ship the individual components to the customer to self-assemble, you don't need certification...

Where is the "individual components" line drawn?

As soon as you take anything and put it together, my lawyer has told me. Technically, even computer shops assembling computers from parts will need a full certification for every combination they sell... it's crazy.

Add the WEEE regulation (valuable resource recycling) to the mess and you're out a couple thousand bucks if you do everything by the books.

Interesting. Are Adafruit (https://www.adafruit.com/category/112) and Sparkfun (https://www.sparkfun.com/categories/16) certifying each of their wireless module breakout boards, for example?

Adafruit is an US company, they can take advantage of simpler US regulations. As long as I import the modules for private usage, I don't need EU regulations (but in case my device causes RF interruptions, I still am liable!).

As soon as I start to selling them for money in the EU, I am the importer and thus need to provide CE certification, R&TTE inspection, WEEE trash register, etc pp.

You can kind of achieve the same results with an Arduino board and https://github.com/rwaldron/johnny-five, but you do have to have a computer connected. I think you could probably hook up a raspberryPi with a usb network adapter and an Arduino for the for the same or less cost than the main unit.

Still interesting all the same, if they can get the cost down it would open the micro controller world up to a completely new group of people.

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