Firefly Design LLC

Firefly Ice Blue has passed FCC testing!

Here is the Firefly Ice on the clear plastic table in the RF anechoic test chamber (tiny black device in the lower right):

 

 

RF Anechoic Chamber

 

If you are thinking of making a product with a radio there are a couple of things to keep in mind when designing your device to make things easier when the time comes for FCC testing.

1)  Make it easy to bypass the antenna and matching circuit to bring out the RF signal via a 50 Ohm SMA connector.  This allows the device to be directly connected to a network analyzer as required for a number of tests.

 

2) Prepare test software to place the Bluetooth 4.0 radio into Direct Test Mode (see the Bluetooth Specification) with various parameters.  You will be asked to put your device into a direct test mode and transmitting on various frequencies, so make that easy and quick in your app.

3) Bring a couple of chargers and computers to use with your device for measuring conducted emissions.  Since your device is so low power, you will actually be mainly testing the chargers and laptops conducted emissions rather than your devices.