I am far from an electronic mastermind but enjoy hobby ideas and expanding on designs. I am not into radio or remote control circuits but instead I stick to digital and micro-controller design. I developed a couple circuit boards that consist of a shift register and EEprom controlled by an off-board Arduino connected with Dupont wires. The shift register is timing at five mili-seconds and of course generating near field noise,
To start a discussion, I researched FCC compliance concerning unintentional radiators and purchased a Tinysa spectrum analyzer along with near field probes. My question is: Is there anyone who does self compliance testing on their boards and what parameters are looked at. Is it dBm, frequency, etc and what limits are considered satisfactory for a basic unintentional radiator self compliance test. I do have a basic understanding and will stop here to limit the post length.
Dropping a summarized answer here:
There are typically 2 types electromagnetic interference; conducted and radiated. To get an idea on how to characterize them you can look in standards like MIL-STD-461.
So you will typically look at the amplitude over frequency and make sure you end up below the limits defined by your standard. Pre-compliance on conducted emissions is pretty easy to do at home with a current clamp and a LISN. Radiated emissions is a bit harder and typically needs an annechoic chamber to be somewhat representative.
If you notice that you are above the limit on a certain frequency range you can start going around with sniffer probes to locate exactly where that problematic emission comes from and start implementing corrections accordingly.
I am soon going to release a set of sniffer probes and maybe a current clamp to measure conducted emissions on Tindie so keep an eye to my store if interest 