Post by thread:[EE]: Kits?

Hi all, I am now quite a bit of the way through the tutorial on wireless comms for microcontrollers (which was discussed here back in March). I was planning on making the tutorial itself freely available on the web and then sell kits for the major design examples. I have been doing some research of FCC rules and I noticed that they make a rather sharp distinction between purely home-build devices and kits. Home-built devices do not need any kind of certification, provided that you only build 5 of them and use good engineering practice to try to meet the specs. It appears, though, that if I were to sell kits, I would have to apply for FCC certification for an intentional radiator (for the transmitters, anyway) and possibly regular certification for any of the devices which use frequencies higerh than 1.7MHz. Is this correct? I have bought quite a few kits during my time as an electronic experimenter, and I never remember any FCC data on them (even for transmittes). Is this rule generally not enforced and ignored, or am I interpreting it correctly? If it is ture, can I get around it by just selling a PCB and offering a selection of parts which would just happen to allow you to build the devices on the site? While I am putting a lot of effort into this and I think the result will be very useful to people, I am working on a rather low budget and I don't think I could afford to make all th measurements needed for the certification process. Thanks in advance for any advice, Sean -- http://www.piclist.com hint: The PICList is archived three different ways. See http://www.piclist.com/#archives for details.

Hi Sean, I only can cover Europe in this statement, but I think it is certainly easier for you to manufacture some kits for the ISM band (as a ham you may weep now, for these are most certainly inside or next to HAM bands, e. g. 433MHz). These kits may fall under a kind of "general license if by design you do not exceed some limits for TX power or antenna gain - antenna directivity is also an issue. So using 433, 886 or 2400 MHz will perhaps give you an easier life in the US of A also. One comment on your project: I think you are doing a great work, even I am going to wait for the possibility to download the complete file. Lots of people will profit from this work. I am also a HAM and my work is primarily RF circuitry, and currently I am working on a compley book on most aspects of spectrum analysis, covering schematics, methods, applications and theory. Benn writing for 4 years now, phew. So the best of luck for this project! Greets (73) Jochen Feldhaar DH6FAZ Sean Breheny schrieb: {Quote hidden}> Hi all, > > I am now quite a bit of the way through the tutorial on wireless comms > for microcontrollers (which was discussed here back in March). I was > planning on making the tutorial itself freely available on the web and > then sell kits for the major design examples. > > I have been doing some research of FCC rules and I noticed that they make > a rather sharp distinction between purely home-build devices and kits. > Home-built devices do not need any kind of certification, provided that > you only build 5 of them and use good engineering practice to try to meet > the specs. > > It appears, though, that if I were to sell kits, I would have to apply > for FCC certification for an intentional radiator (for the transmitters, > anyway) and possibly regular certification for any of the devices which > use frequencies higerh than 1.7MHz. Is this correct? I have bought quite > a few kits during my time as an electronic experimenter, and I never > remember any FCC data on them (even for transmittes). Is this rule > generally not enforced and ignored, or am I interpreting it correctly? If > it is ture, can I get around it by just selling a PCB and offering a > selection of parts which would just happen to allow you to build the > devices on the site? While I am putting a lot of effort into this and I > think the result will be very useful to people, I am working on a rather low > budget and I don't think I could afford to make all th measurements > needed for the certification process. > > Thanks in advance for any advice, > > Sean > > -- > http://www.piclist.com hint: The PICList is archived three different > ways. See http://www.piclist.com/#archives for details. -- http://www.piclist.com hint: The PICList is archived three different ways. See http://www.piclist.com/#archives for details.

>It appears, though, that if I were to sell kits, I would have to apply >for FCC certification for an intentional radiator (for the transmitters, >anyway) and possibly regular certification for any of the devices which >use frequencies higerh than 1.7MHz. Is this correct? From my reading of part 15 and/or 97, yes, unless it is test equipment, or a prototype - but you can't sell prototypes. You can't even peddle a damn PIC product that clocks over a few KHz! :-( > I have bought quite >a few kits during my time as an electronic experimenter, and I never >remember any FCC data on them (even for transmittes). Is this rule >generally not enforced and ignored, or am I interpreting it correctly? I believe it is not enforced, proceed at your peril! The FCC surely has lots of better things to do. Unless you make so much money you compete with a company that will contribute to a politician that can sick their dogs on you - like if Linx gets mad and complains about. If they never hear of your gadgets, how can they persecute you? Now if you made 50 or 5 KW amplifiers for CB radios or cellular phone jammer kits they would probably find out. The FCC is suppose to promote such things as amature radio and advancing the art, which your product and literature does. Which would make you in compliance with the spirit of the law if not the letter. >it is ture, can I get around it by just selling a PCB and offering a >selection of parts which would just happen to allow you to build the >devices on the site? Only the top preditors in the food chain get away with with dissembling over the meaning of the word 'is', coaching witnesses and suborning perjury ("I was never alone with her Betty, right? I never had the door shut Betty, right?). As Orwell said, "some animals are more equal than others". You might want to find out who to make a campaign contribution to in case you have any problems. Maybe an indirect offer, something like "I'll be able to contribute regularly to your campaign fund, as long as I'm capable of operating profitably, unharrassed by the FCC". Most savy politicians probably wouldn't accept a direct quid-pro-quo (but their brothers might!). Its much easier for them to break the implicit 'deal' if they can deny there ever was one! >I don't think I could afford to make all th measurements >needed for the certification process. The FCC busted a bug peddler a while back for selling kits, IIRC. I remember it was discussed. There were plenty of others to go after, and the bug wasn't a sophisticated spread spectrum or matched filter device either. I wonder what a laywer would have to say about selective enforcement of laws? Once again, the system gets paid either way when you pay the lawyers. Scott **************************************************************** Freedom is pursuing your carrot, not running from a stick. The mob only rules what its members are allowed to achieve. How is it the cellular phone spectrum is divided so both service providers have and equal hardware burden, yet the banking monopolies can freely share your private credit card purchase records with their subsidiaries for 'marketing' purposes? I guess the banks and their oligarchs know how to bribe politicians better than the cellular industry! Quo Bono - Who Profits! **************************************************************** -- http://www.piclist.com hint: The PICList is archived three different ways. See http://www.piclist.com/#archives for details.

At 10:10 PM 7/3/01 -0300, Alexandre Domingos F. Souza wrote: > >It appears, though, that if I were to sell kits, I would have to apply > >for FCC certification for an intentional radiator (for the transmitters, > >anyway) and possibly regular certification for any of the devices which > >use frequencies higerh than 1.7MHz. Is this correct? I have bought quite > > In Brazil you can sell anything that goes below 100mw and no > certification is needed. If I'm not mistaken, FCC does the same This is NOT true of the US. You have to part 15 cert, and there is another section for intentional radiators. -- Dave's Engineering Page: http://www.dvanhorn.org I would have a link to http://www.findu.com/cgi-bin/find.cgi?KC6ETE-9 here in my signature line, but due to the inability of sysadmins at TELOCITY to differentiate a signature line from the text of an email, I am forbidden to have it. -- http://www.piclist.com hint: The PICList is archived three different ways. See http://www.piclist.com/#archives for details.

At 10:31 PM 7/3/01 -0300, Alexandre Domingos F. Souza wrote: > >I don't think it was the FCC... it might have been customs or the IRS, > >shutting them down for designing products intended for "surrepitous use" or > >something... I am, of course, referring to the Ramsey Electronics fiasco. > > What happened to Ramsey? It was the FCC. They were selling bugging devices in kit form. Granted they were the world's crappiest bugs, but that's what they were. The FCC stepped in and said "no more". They are doing enforcement these days. -- Dave's Engineering Page: http://www.dvanhorn.org I would have a link to http://www.findu.com/cgi-bin/find.cgi?KC6ETE-9 here in my signature line, but due to the inability of sysadmins at TELOCITY to differentiate a signature line from the text of an email, I am forbidden to have it. -- http://www.piclist.com#nomail Going offline? Don't AutoReply us! email EraseMElistservspam_OUTTakeThisOuTmitvma.mit.edu with SET PICList DIGEST in the body

David VanHorn wrote: > > At 10:31 PM 7/3/01 -0300, Alexandre Domingos F. Souza wrote: > > >I don't think it was the FCC... it might have been customs or the IRS, > > >shutting them down for designing products intended for "surrepitous use" or > > >something... I am, of course, referring to the Ramsey Electronics fiasco. > > > > What happened to Ramsey? > > It was the FCC. > They were selling bugging devices in kit form. > Granted they were the world's crappiest bugs, but that's what they were. > The FCC stepped in and said "no more". > > They are doing enforcement these days. Is that for real?? In the US i'm guessing. Here in Aust all the electronics stores sell fm bug kits, they are a very popular beginner kit. -Roman -- http://www.piclist.com#nomail Going offline? Don't AutoReply us! email KILLspamlistservKILLspammitvma.mit.edu with SET PICList DIGEST in the body

> No, it wasn't the FCC. It was the customs service: > > http://slashdot.org/articles/00/01/04/2316228.shtml > > -Randy Glenn So, is Ramsey out of business or just paying large fines? About 9-10 years ago, the customs people shut down a local business that sold bugging devices and other assorted "security" devices such as voice scramblers, bug detectors, etc... They were charged with smuggling because they imported much of this stuff. They didn't do it in any kind of secret or covert manner, they just ordered the stuff from Asia and in it came. It really was nothing but a trumped up charge, since hundreds of other companies were importing the same stuff. IIRC the devices were legal to possess at the time, just not legal to import (smuggle). Ironic isn't it, since the major cities are installing traffic light spy cams all over the place. The locals here have the EZ-tag system for toll road payment without stopping. It is a passive device that identifies you when you pass thru the automatic toll gates. All around town, the freeways (non toll roads) have EZ-tag readers installed under the guise of traffic flow analysis and management. These devices measure the time it takes for an EZ-tag to make it from one reader to the next, and then calculating vehicle speed as well as tracking you around town. So far they are not using it to send tickets out, but how long will that last? michael -- http://www.piclist.com#nomail Going offline? Don't AutoReply us! email RemoveMElistservTakeThisOuTmitvma.mit.edu with SET PICList DIGEST in the body

> At 10:31 PM 7/3/01 -0300, Alexandre Domingos F. Souza wrote: > > >I don't think it was the FCC... it might have been customs or the IRS, > > >shutting them down for designing products intended for "surrepitous use" or > > >something... I am, of course, referring to the Ramsey Electronics fiasco. {Quote hidden}> > > > What happened to Ramsey? > > It was the FCC. > They were selling bugging devices in kit form. > Granted they were the world's crappiest bugs, but that's what they were. > The FCC stepped in and said "no more". > > They are doing enforcement these days. > > -- > Dave's Engineering Page: http://www.dvanhorn.org I have bought some stuff from Ramsey, and their catalog has an explanation from their side. The products that they were forced to stop selling were kits (what self-respecting James Bond is going to build a bug from a kit!) for small FM transmitters that transmit to an ordinary FM radio. Not particularly small, not particularly low in power consumption. In other words, from Ramsey's point of view: not bugs! They were mostly sold to experimenters and teachers and electronics club moderators. Bob Ammerman RAm Systems (contract development of high performance, high function, low-level software) -- http://www.piclist.com#nomail Going offline? Don't AutoReply us! email spamBeGonelistservspamBeGonemitvma.mit.edu with SET PICList DIGEST in the body

Nowadays most of the microcontroller clocks will be higher than 10 MHz, it will surely emit some r.f., but I found many of these microprocessor based devices in the market are not having fcc approval (I didn't see the fcc logo attached), does it mean they are exempted or they simply ignore fcc? >From my reading of part 15 and/or 97, yes, unless it is test equipment, or >a prototype - but you can't sell prototypes. You can't even peddle a damn >PIC >product that clocks over a few KHz! :-( _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. -- http://www.piclist.com#nomail Going offline? Don't AutoReply us! email listservEraseME.....mitvma.mit.edu with SET PICList DIGEST in the body

At 12:36 PM 7/4/01 -0400, John Waters wrote: >Nowadays most of the microcontroller clocks will be higher than 10 MHz, it >will surely emit some r.f., but I found many of these microprocessor based >devices in the market are not having fcc approval (I didn't see the fcc logo >attached), does it mean they are exempted or they simply ignore fcc? Sounds like a problem to me. For kits, you can test a properly built kit, and there's a procedure where you put language in the manual that says that when built as instructed, the kit is expected to conform. You can self-certify (declaration of conformity) but if there's a problem, you'd really rather have results from an independent test lab in hand. -- Dave's Engineering Page: http://www.dvanhorn.org I would have a link to http://www.findu.com/cgi-bin/find.cgi?KC6ETE-9 here in my signature line, but due to the inability of sysadmins at TELOCITY to differentiate a signature line from the text of an email, I am forbidden to have it. -- http://www.piclist.com#nomail Going offline? Don't AutoReply us! email EraseMElistservmitvma.mit.edu with SET PICList DIGEST in the body

At 07:35 PM 7/4/01 +1000, Roman wrote: {Quote hidden}>David VanHorn wrote: > > > > At 10:31 PM 7/3/01 -0300, Alexandre Domingos F. Souza wrote: > > > >I don't think it was the FCC... it might have been customs or the IRS, > > > >shutting them down for designing products intended for "surrepitous > use" or > > > >something... I am, of course, referring to the Ramsey Electronics > fiasco. > > > > > > What happened to Ramsey? > > > > It was the FCC. > > They were selling bugging devices in kit form. > > Granted they were the world's crappiest bugs, but that's what they were. > > The FCC stepped in and said "no more". > > > > They are doing enforcement these days. > > >Is that for real?? In the US i'm guessing. >Here in Aust all the electronics stores sell >fm bug kits, they are a very popular beginner >kit. >-Roman I believe the seizure was done by the FBI and the original stories quoted the Terrorist Control Act as the authority. There are two obvious explanations for the event: 1. Promoting the device as a "bug" in contravention of anti-tapping laws, or 2. Importing of circuits that violated custom rules. Ramsey Electronics did not seem too adversely impacted by the event. ================================================================ Robert A. LaBudde, PhD, PAS, Dpl. ACAFS e-mail: RemoveMEralEraseMEEraseMElcfltd.com Least Cost Formulations, Ltd. URL: http://lcfltd.com/ 824 Timberlake Drive Tel: 757-467-0954 Virginia Beach, VA 23464-3239 Fax: 757-467-2947 "Vere scire est per causas scire" ================================================================ -- http://www.piclist.com#nomail Going offline? Don't AutoReply us! email RemoveMElistservspam_OUTKILLspammitvma.mit.edu with SET PICList DIGEST in the body

Probably ignoring... See http://www.hallikainen.com/cgi-bin/section.pl?section=15.103 for exempted devices. See http://www.hallikainen.com/cgi-bin/section.pl?section=15 for all of part 15. Harold On Wed, 4 Jul 2001 12:36:27 -0400 John Waters <RemoveMEjohn_fm_watersTakeThisOuTspamHOTMAIL.COM> writes: > Nowadays most of the microcontroller clocks will be higher than 10 > MHz, it > will surely emit some r.f., but I found many of these microprocessor > based > devices in the market are not having fcc approval (I didn't see the > fcc logo > attached), does it mean they are exempted or they simply ignore fcc? > ________________________________________________________________ GET INTERNET ACCESS FROM JUNO! Juno offers FREE or PREMIUM Internet access for less! Join Juno today! For your FREE software, visit: dl.http://www.juno.com/get/tagj. -- http://www.piclist.com hint: PICList Posts must start with ONE topic: [PIC]:,[SX]:,[AVR]: ->uP ONLY! [EE]:,[OT]: ->Other [BUY]:,[AD]: ->Ads

Back in high school (a little over 30 years ago), we saw a movie in math. It was an introduction to calculus that was based on a guy getting a speeding ticket based on his time on and off a toll road. They had the police guy explaining the "mean value theorem" to the motorist... Harold On Wed, 4 Jul 2001 10:27:18 -0400 Bob Ammerman <EraseMERAMMERMANspamspamBeGonePRODIGY.NET> writes: {Quote hidden}> Here in New York (USA) there was a big stink about the state sending > speeding tickets to truckers based on the entry and exit times from > a toll > road as logged by an EZ-Pass system. > > btw: I have an EZ-Pass tag on my car... hm.... > > Bob Ammerman > RAm Systems > (contract development of high performance, high function, low-level > software) > ________________________________________________________________ GET INTERNET ACCESS FROM JUNO! Juno offers FREE or PREMIUM Internet access for less! Join Juno today! For your FREE software, visit: dl.http://www.juno.com/get/tagj. -- http://www.piclist.com hint: PICList Posts must start with ONE topic: [PIC]:,[SX]:,[AVR]: ->uP ONLY! [EE]:,[OT]: ->Other [BUY]:,[AD]: ->Ads