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The Journey to CE Marking an IoT Product Part 2: Expert Advice (VIDEO)

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This series of posts follow the progress of taking an IoT product from prototype, through testing and design revision as required, in order to allow CE marking for general sale.

In part 1 we introduced the Environmental Sensor project that would be the focus of this blog post series and we gave a very short summary of CE and the overall process. However, before we get on to design review, testing and results, it would help to understand CE in a little more detail and in particular, EMC requirements and the different types of testing that will need to be carried out.

Fortunately, we have expert help on hand and in the videos that follow we hear from James Pawson of Unit 3 Compliance, about CE, EMC and the importance of considering this from the beginning.

What is CE?

So let’s start by asking the questions, what is CE and why is it important? What are some of the key directives we need to pay attention to and what are the role of harmonised standards?

What is EMC?

So now we understand that Electromagnetic Compatibility (EMC) is central to CE, but what does this mean in practice and what different types of testing will be required?

EMC from the Start

An all too common mistake is to not think about EMC until right at the end of the project when a product is sent to the test laboratory. In this final video, we hear about the importance of considering EMC from the very start and how this, when combined with expert review, has the potential to save a great deal of time and money — and can actually be the difference between success and failure.

Next steps

The importance of considering EMC from the start leads us nicely into part 3 and in the next post in the series, we will look at the output from the initial design review process.

— Andrew Back

Open source (hardware and software!) advocate, Treasurer and Director of the Free and Open Source Silicon Foundation, organiser of Wuthering Bytes technology festival and founder of the Open Source Hardware User Group.
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