We want to launch a Kickstarter project, hackable, open source hardware like OpenMV, and sell it to United States, Europe and the rest of the world. There are UL and FCC certifications for US, CE certification for Europe and so on, but some online sources state that these certifications are not necessary to sell electronics products if they are open source, and some sources state that every electronics products have to be certified. So I would like to ask if you guys have obtained any of these certifications for OpenMV products, or you can just sell without certification since it’s open hardware? Thank you so much in advance.
Hi, the OpenMV Cam RT1062 is FCC, CE, and RoHs certified. You need to obtain certification for any product that emits RF energy, or, use a pre-certified module+antenna. Note that creating your own PCB antenna will require you get certification.
For our other non-emitting products they are only RoHs compliant.
All of our products, since they are bare PCB boards, are considered sub assemblies of a product. If you are selling something more akin to a consumer product you’ll need to get certification even if it doesn’t emit RF energy.
Thank you very much for the prompt and detailed reply.
It’s good to know that no certification is required if we are using an already certified RF emitting module. We are using off the shelf ESP32 module with PCB antenna which is already certified so I think we’re safe.
Aside from the RF energy, the boards emit EM energy too. As far as I know RoHS covers only hazardous substances aspect. So can we say that sub assembly products do not require an EMC certification, and certifications have nothing to do with the product being open or closed source?
It depends on whether you are a sub-component or an end product. If you are an end product, you must get all the certifications. If you are a sub-component, then it’s up to the company integrating your product.
The OpenMV Cam is a sub-component. So, we get certs for our wireless products so it’s easy to integrate it into a larger product and get that certified.
Additionally, you cannot import devices that emit RF energy into some countries without certs.