LVD testing day 1

First day of LVD testing. This is going to take 42 hours so we can't be there to document the whole process. They don't even want us filming at all though as you can see this hasn't deterred us so far.

LVD isn't as interesting as EMC testing but here are a few cool things that caught our attention.

First, a really BIG anechoic chamber.



A strange spherical container used for light bulb testing.



A really powerful oven.



Misc equipment being tested...







And our heroes once again!



This is a yucky way to measure the temperature of each individual component...









We were finally able to see the entire EN60950 standard... 200 pages of safety guidelines! Wouldn't be such a bad idea having this available at design time. These EU dudes have laws saying how your cables need to be, how big your screws need to be, they really don't leave anything up to your imagination.

Most articles talk about severe shock hazards, ejection of molten metal and such which just underlines how ridiculous it is for our device to have to follow the same protocols just because it's radio controlled.

There are some odd testing methods too... like this steel ball impact test. You guys don't really have steel balls here do you?



Oh yeah we do...



Now remember how the other lab was trying to cheat us saying we needed to do laser testing on the LEDs??? Here's what the Law says!





Compliance is checked by inspection, by evaluation of the data provided by the manufacturer and, if necessary, by testing according to IEC 60825-1.

In other words we do NOT need to do the laser testing for indicator LEDs! But hey, they wouldn't do LVD for us without the extra charges so now we've got another lab who will.

Now speaking about EU nonsense, get this. We requested an electronic copy of this 200 page document with all the rules. They said it's illegal for them to provide us a copy because it's "copyrighted"! Since when are laws copyrighted?

Yep... the laws (which you have to comply with if you don't want to get fines) are copyrighted, and you need to pay 2RMB per page in order to get the text! Total 60 USD to get the entire document.

Since when do you have to pay to get a copy of the copyrighted laws you're supposed to follow?

This is considered insanity even in the military dictatorship of the Banana kingdom of Boonga Mamoomba. But in the European Union, it's nothing special.

"Vive la bureaucratie!"

And if you drive, make sure you catch up with those speed limits before it becomes a subscription service to know what they are :)

Comments

By sub3604 at 2010-11-09 10:08:18 Reply

Nothing those idiots did in Brussels (EU) would surprise me anymore these are the same people that decided all bananas must be straight even though only artificially grown bananas are straight. (they grow towards the sun hence the bend but artificially grown ones are grown with lights under them which makes them straight) Not that the shape matters anyway.

Sorry to hear you're having to deal with such absurd rules that the EU come up with, but glad you are as unfortunately the UK won't let the people have a vote to leave so we are stuck with them.

By smackMyNuts at 2010-11-11 01:23:51 Reply

The question of copyrighting laws has actually been a surprisingly active topic recently as the internet has made all sorts of things easier to access. Prior to the internet where you could get a pdf for basically no duplication costs, regardless of copyright, the cost of getting copies made of legal codes was about the same as simply buying the bound copies that were being sold, so it didn't really matter much either way. And they maintained copies at libraries and public offices that you could peruse. With the internet people expect to be able to download the complete laws of the land for free, as well they should be able to.

The absurd one recently was when the state of Oregon claimed that all of its laws were covered by copyright and couldn't be reproduced without the state's permission. So someone sued them and they backed down after consulting with their lawyers (who I'm sure pointed out that all works of the government are public domain works not subject to copyright and that if the lawsuit proceeded, they would surely lose).

However, there's been some more interesting legal wrangling on the topic of codes. Certain legal codes (probably including that one) are not created by the government, but rather by outside agencies. A prime example of this is the building codes. They're copyrighted documents produced by code organizations who then want places to adopt the codes as law both to validate the organization and so that they can sell copies to the public for profit. This went to court in the last few years and produced an interesting ruling (in the US) that laws must be able to be copied freely. So they held that although the model building code produced by the code organization (200+ pages) was subject to copyright and owned by the code organization, the version of that code enacted into law (which was the same 200 pages with somewhere around half a dozen minor changes in a sentence or paragraph here and there) was not subject to copyright and could be copied freely. This decision has set a precedent that any version of a code which is enacted into law is not subject to copyright as long as it is labeled and distributed as being the law of the land and not the model code it was based on. This has lead to a movement to scan in the building codes for specific states and post them online. Most state building codes can be found here: http://bulk.resource.org/codes.gov/

So far, I haven't heard of anything similar happening in the EU yet, but one can hope.

By dreamloverlabs at 2010-11-11 04:16:57 Reply

Interesting!