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- Hacker News
- I've been building a certification intelligence tool for hardware teams (markready.io) and needed a good test lab directory. The FCC publishes accreditation data through a Socrata API but it's pretty bare - names, addresses, designation numbers, and expiration dates that are often years stale. No websites, no capabilities, nothing to tell you whether a lab is a two-person shop or an Intertek subsidiary.
The first thing I did was build an LLM-maintained wiki about the hardware certification universe - FCC rule parts, equipment authorization types, test standards, the TCB system, international equivalents, all of it. About 30 pages of structured knowledge that Claude could reference when doing the actual enrichment work. Then I ran a loop of subagents over multiple days to enrich the labs - pulling from the Socrata API, cross-referencing TCB registrations to see which labs can certify (not just test), hitting Google Places for websites and coordinates, crawling accreditation body directories to figure out which labs are actually still active. The FCC's own expiration dates are useless for this - tons of labs show 2022 or 2023 dates but are clearly still operating. Claude synthesized the descriptions and capabilities from all the scraped data into structured records, using the wiki as context.
The directory is at markready.io/labs. You can browse by country, US state, and TCB status.
Today's an interesting day to launch this because the FCC is voting to ban all 126 test labs in China and Hong Kong. Not just the government-controlled ones they banned last year - all of them. 21% of the global total gone. 27 of those 126 are Western firms (Intertek, SGS, TUV, UL) operating China offices. I wrote up the full impact analysis at markready.io/blog/fcc-bad-labs-vote.
Full disclosure: I've never actually gotten a device through FCC certification myself. I've been building RF hardware since I was a kid but always on the hobby side. What pulled me into this was the data problem - the FCC publishes all this information but nobody had stitched it together into anything usable, and it felt like a genuinely interesting dataset to enrich and a real gap in understanding the hardware product space.
Built with Next.js + Cloudflare. The enriched dataset covers 28 countries.
by chambertime - > Today's an interesting day to launch this because the FCC is voting to ban all 126 test labs in China and Hong Kong
Does this increase or decrease demand for your tool? Less fragmentation would be expected to decrease demand from insiders. But more regulatory scrutiny would raise the stakes for outsiders getting it wrong.
- Aside from the majority of comments being related to whether or not the article is LLM generated 8-/ There still remains the question of the US de-certifying Chinese FCC approval labs.
It's not like the US has the strictest radio requirements on products, in fact, it's close to the opposite. Both asia and europe have much stricter emissions and sensitivity requirements.
But the big question to me, is what do they intend to do about the overwhelming majority of US consumed electronics being built in China?
The idea of abandoning chinese manufacturing is a delusion. It would take decades.
The idea that we do the "really advanced, complicated" manufacturing in the US, and let the Chinese build the "simple" stuff is even more delusional. China has the most advanced manufacturing tech, and the greatest scale of manufacturing in the world, by far. By very very far.
Sure, the US could catch up, assuming they stop banning Chinese cars and other advanced products and instead start importing and learning from them.
All of this delusional thinking goes back to one common source: elect a clown, expect a circus...
by johnea - Why is OPs comment on his own work that hit first page flagged and dead? Is it repeating info from the article?by gchamonlive
- Probably because it appears to have been written by an LLM (the post too, but I assume comments are more easily killed by flags (?)). (To be clear I did not flag it myself.)
- This will make testing more expensive and hence some will no longer bother to FCC test excluding the US from receiving their product. Especially small companies and startups.
I did not FCC certify my product because the primary focus is for the European market but now I would also have to consider costs.
by sschueller - This is a valid concern. For the time being I'd expect Taiwanese labs to be a price comparable alternative, but this is a likely outcome.by chambertime
- This article completely omits a section on when external accreditation. For many products you can get CE marking or similar with in-house testing.by c-c-c-c-c
- Yeah, this article is really focused on FCC certification. But to your point, there are other sections on the site that are focused on CE certification and how to navigate getting certified so you can sell throughout the world.by chambertime
- As far as I can tell, this distinction is mostly meaningless in practice.
Most people are going to want to sell their products on an international market, which essentially means designing and testing it to the strictest rules any country uses and just having to do a whole bunch of paperwork for the rest: getting a lab to do both FCC and CE is not significantly more expensive than either one on its own. And because FCC requires external testing, that means doing external testing.
Besides, although CE is technically a self-declaration that you follow the relevant rules, it still requires you to be able to demonstrate that you follow those rules - which means you have to test and report on a level comparable to an external lab, which means building a testing lab with a price tag comparable to a very nice home, and doing all the annoying paperwork like having your equipment regularly tested and calibrated. You are allowed to do it in-house, but is it worth it?
by crote - I have first hand experience with this. It may look like a politically motivated move, but in the RF industry when you need something to pass, China is known to be much friendlier/lax than other labs.
For those who don't know, the point of these labs is to generate certified test results. The lab's job is to certify that the test was done correctly with calibrated test equipment. They then give you the results which you then give to the regulating body.
However, you are the one who knows your product and how it operates. You are present in the lab, in the room, doing the testing with them. This introduces a lot of grey area where a lab may or may not go along with what you say. Chinese labs are known for just going along with it. After all, you are the one paying them tens of thousands, and they know you probably have many other products that need certifying. It's mutually beneficial for them to be lax.
by WarmWash - > Chinese labs are known for just going along with it. After all, you are the one paying them tens of thousands,
Are the engineering firms going to Chinese labs because of their rubber stamp approval or because the process is “tens of thousands” as opposed to “hundreds of thousands”?
by jitler - > The core proposal bans all labs in China and Hong Kong, extending the "Bad Labs" rule the FCC adopted in May 2025. A broader proposal would also cut off labs in any country without a Mutual Recognition Agreement with the US, which adds 5 more labs (4 in India, 1 in Switzerland). Total at risk: 131 labs, 22.2% of the global total.
As expected this is an attack on China-sourced electronics.
I hope this isn’t the start of a return to the Bad Times when many niche electronics were simply unavailable at any price, and what was available was $1K+ for what should be commodity gear.
What the FCC does is important, but there needs to be a sense of proportionality. I am a ham radio user but I am not particularly bothered if my $30 DVD player has a few spurious emissions, as long as they aren’t egregious. I also don’t mind imperfect but cheap radios like Baofengs if they help get people into the hobby. It’s good to have a box of these to hand out in emergency situations! Can’t do that with Yaesus unless you’re made of money.
by iamnothere - 73 fellow ham radio operator!by chambertime
- We still as amateur radio operators have the "kit" exemption that comes with 3 components we plug together right?by sidewndr46
- Maybe someone here will start manufacturing these things?
Of course initially, expecting the same quality and low price will likely be an issue. But over time it gets better is probably the idea. Will it actually happen, who can say? But I can understand the idea they have here. I'm not saying they'll be successful. Definitely not saying I agree with it. (There are far more effective ways to accomplish a manufacturing ramp up with far less risk.) But I get the idea.
by bilbo0s - > What the FCC does is important, but there needs to be a sense of proportionality. I am a ham radio user but I am not particularly bothered if my $30 DVD player has a few spurious emissions, as long as they aren’t egregious. I also don’t mind imperfect but cheap radios like Baofengs if they help get people into the hobby. It’s good to have a box of these to hand out in emergency situations! Can’t do that with Yaesus unless you’re made of money.
I'm bothered when my neighbors turn on their christmas lights, and the whole 40 meter band is wiped out.
Also baofengs are horrible all those regards:
* spurious emissions (thus banned in quite a few countries) * useless in most emergencies (but preppers somehow buy them for some reason... probably due to youtubers shilling for them) * handing them out to whom exactly? You need a ham radio licence to use them, and i'm pretty sure every licenced ham has a radio and doesn't need handouts from others (unless we're talking about baofeng FRS/PMR radios, but somehow preppers never buy those)
Also a yaesu ft65 costs around 100eur over here, you don't have to be made of money to afford a much better radio.
by ajsnigrutin - This article is excessively LLM written to the point that there’s barely any real information in between all of the unnecessary pie charts and repeated points.
This move is being executed too broadly, in my opinion, but the “bad labs” problem especially in China is widely known in the industry. If you spend any time in the electronics industry at smaller companies you will encounter people who know Chinese labs that will give your product passing test results every time as long as you’re not so far past the limits that it’s too obvious.
by Aurornis - I've noticed a trend of calling every single article "This is AI or LLM, I can't stand it".
And really, you can't tell. Nobody can tell. Humans write badly and blandly also. It's just a trope at this point.
No, you're comment is an LLM.
- Thanks for that insight on how the Chinese labs are perceived amongst hardware engineers.
I know pie charts are decisive. I thought they were visually helpful in this instance.
by chambertime - i think it's better to flag the article and move on. the author's replies in the thread are also LLM authored. and nothing in the article makes any sense.
- The search site they point to (https://markready.io/labs) also lists incorrect locations on the map for labs. BUREAU VERITAS CONSUMER PRODUCTS SERVICES, INC. shows on the map in Littleton, Colorado but is actually located in Littleton, Massachusetts.by EnderWT
- Yes when qualifying new equipment often the source of failing emissions is the power supply (or some other third party device) that has already 'passed' testing.by milleramp
- Is that why the pie chart colors don't match the colors in the legend at all..?by mh-