ESP32 Forum

Hi all,

So we are designing some boards which will be used in B2B projects only in small quantities (<100) and the projects will have a beta state for some considerable time. But still, could easily be this device some day wil take off and that we will be using it in a consumer environment as a spin-off. Now I've spoken to some representatives of the - let's called them 'traditional' embedded MCU manufactories and distributers - and I was warned that I'm going to be in a world of hurt getting these modules certified (WiFi, BT, etc).

Now I've seen some approvals like FCC certs, but I have no idea what to expect. To what extend do I need to take this sound advise with a grain of salt. Or what can I expect when these devices will become mainstream? Let me know what you guys think.

kind regards,
Martijn

Sounds like a knee-jerk response when you say "we're working with this Chinese company, their modules cost this much, they'll talk to us, and we don't even have to buy a million units". They panic because for them the sky is falling.

WiFive wrote:..because for them the sky is falling.

..and big rain fall down mutually

@smeedy
WiFi is on right,

how you want/need certification for which land?
you must go after build your Board to your testing laboratories ( "Prüfanstalten" ) , which approve the.

How you build your board with more things that can be you need more as FCC..CE and so on.
are you not an engineering office for electronics?
usually you must know the way to become the end certification for your product.
the base FCC, CE ..and others is done for the "Modul Wroom-32"
if you take this in a new environment deviating from the test arrangement of the module Wroom-32 itself,
mounting in a new PCB, you have to do usually a following test and certification and can take the base of the modul certification.
..
hope this helps

best wishes
rudi

Thanks for the replies,

No we are not an electronics engineering company. We create software for the last 20 or so years, mostly sensor or metering related with /a lot/ of data. This was mainly co-location, but all this moved to AWS the last 7 years - starting with EC2, moved on, and we've never looked back.

Last couple of years we are looking at custom sensors and as we've incorporated LoRaWAN in some of our projects using private networks with some custom PIC-based board designed by a partner. As software architects we give out flows and patterns to adhere and we do some boots-on-the-ground on the C implementations, but we work mainly at the server side using different languages. We've all done our share on C programming through university, and also we have some expertise in teams on embedded. But most of the work is done with partners. They do the electrical schema / pcb-design, manufacturing, and the core programming.

So. The ESP32 offers some interesting aspects and we decided to do some beta testing. This turned out pretty sweet, so we had a custom PCB designed in February through our HW partner with some RS485/232 IO and using WiFi (AP bootstrapped) and AWS IoT for MQTT. This looks very promising for 2017 and up. We are even thinking of pulling it out the beta B2B custom application and do some mainstream application. Even phasing out PIC and start using ESP32 with LoRa.

And this is where the certification comes in. We're based in The Netherlands and our HW partner has done its share of certifications in the past. We are not deviating from the WROOM-32 I think since we still use the original RF which performed not that bad in our particular setup. We've only done some work on the RSx IO, having a stable VCC split 5V/3V on the board, and threw in a mini neopixel because-we-could. But that's it. Oh, and done some stuff using an external crypto chip.

So what kind of certification am I looking at you think? We've also asked our partners, but we've never been down this road.

kind regards,
Martijn

So what kind of certification am I looking at you think? We've also asked our partners, but we've never been down this road.

You will need to have your equipment tested against the Radio Equipment Directive 2014/53/EU aka RED that has replaced the previous R&TTE Directive 1999/5/EC on the 13th of June 2016. The deadline for compliance is the 13th of June 2017 and I think there is one month tolerance to use the inventory. You should be able to get from your Espressif distributor the necessary documentation that you will add to the application to your preferred test lab. If you want to export your product outside of the EU, you will have to do the same according to the regulations in force in the country/regiom where you want to sell the product (FCC for USA, IC for Canada, etc.).

That being said, I don't see the difference between Espressif modules and the ones sold by "traditional" vendors. Actually the ESP-WROOM-32 is certified for six markets covering 30 countries and is also Wi-Fi Alliance certified.