There has been a lot of discussion about regulatory compliance on the announcement thread for these radios.
I thought I should explain a bit about why these radios don't already have compliance certificates, and what you can do to get involved in an effort to get them certified. I should first note that I don't work for 3DRobotics - I'm just a volunteer ArduPilot developer who happens to be very interested in these radios. I also wrote most of the radio firmware. So this is not an official 3DRobotics statement.
The basic idea with regards to regulatory compliance is that these are DIY radio parts. It is our understanding that, at least in the US and Australia, it is quite OK to use radios that comply with the relevant standards without getting them officially certified. Other countries have different rules.
So why didn't 3DRobotics get them certified anyway? Part of the problem is that the firmware is being rapidly developed, with new features regularly added. Under some certification systems that may mean re-certifying each firmware. That would cost a lot, and push up the cost of the radios.
The second problem is that there are so many different certification systems. There is FCC in the US, C-Tick in Australia, CE in Europe etc etc. Sometimes it may be possible to get quicker/cheaper certification of one type if you already have another type, but it is still complex.
So what do you do if you want to use/distribute these radios in a way that requires certification? I think the only reasonable answer is for the community to solve the problem. If someone puts their hand up to volunteer to do the legwork to get these radios certified in some area then they could share the results here and hopefully make life easier for someone else to work on certification elsewhere.
Meanwhile, if you post something about certification, please try to make sure you do your research carefully to make sure the information is accurate. If we can build a community effort around this then I think we can solve it together.
Cheers, Tridge
Replies
I got hold of some 433 modules now and look forward to testing them.
Having a (recently acquired) ham-license allowing me to transmit in the 430MHz band at power levels enough to cook chicken (500watts), I see no problem in using them other than the general requirement to transmit your call sign at the beginning, end and at regular intervals in any transaction.
You have the LBT and other necessary features all lined up but not the call sign from what I can find. I wonder if the callsign can be included in some way in the packets so that I can honestly say to my critical ham buddies that I fulfill all my obligations when using these things.
Would that be something to add in the future??
73 de TF3BGL
It's been very educational (and somewhat depressing!!) watching Jim Drew of XPS go through the certification process on their new radio. Basically you have to have a lab run the certification tests for the radio unit and have the results submitted to the FCC to get a certification number.
Judging by XPS's experience it can be a slow and expensive process!
http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1243767