Parallella Community

Mine also got stuck in German customs. The letter I received states it is missing the invoice or customs declaration. If there's actually an invoice/declaration on there I would say Escaton is likely correct in that the customs declaration is needed but missing/not in the right place.

Mine was held on German Customs too. The reason was, the are looking for an Invoice. The Standalone declaration is not enough for them. Unfortunately inside the Package is no invoice/bill but only packaging/shipping list, but with prices behind. Usually they would reject this, but as the prices shown are "realistic" they accepted it in my case. (So I was saved from paying Tax for Shipping and the eBook payment, which would fall showing them the credit card charge)

I just got back from the customs office, no invoice on the outside, so I can't blame them for holding on to it.

In the meantime I received my parcel. The customs declaration / invoice was missing on the outside, the sticker was inside the box
Adapteva contacted me after my initial post and I sent them photos of the parcel after it arrived. I'm sure they will have a nice talk with their service provider

My Parallella shipment came to a halt at the customs office, too. Unfortunately that office is 350km away from me. I already wrote an email at support@adapteva.com and requested some sort of invoice. Would be great if I could get one that I can send them via fax.
Can't wait to finally have the board in my hands

Hey,

my Parallellas were held back by customs too. When I was at the office and opened the package they immediatelly decided to send the boards to the German Federal Network Agency to check for conformity. Today I got a letter that importing Parallellas is forbidden in Europe because they don't have certification like CE or FCC (see regulation 765/2008 Art. 29 Sect. 2). Now they will be returned to Adapteva...

This is the link were you can select the language of the regulation's PDF:

I've just checked my little Raspberry Pi and sure enough there's a big CE (and FCC) mark on the board, and on the enclosed compliance and safety leaflet from Element14. In the USA, there may need to be some form of FCC compliance certification too, I believe, but they are not the same things.

Raspberry hit this problem very early on in March 2012: see .
You'll see that they thought they could get away without this by claiming it was a development board and not a 'finished product'. But that doesn't apply where the product is shipped directly to end-users and not to be built into other products - which are then tested/certified as a total product.

In the end, compliance and safety testing for the Pi was done by the distribution partners RS Components and element14/Premier Farnell.

tery

Edit: downgraded my rant.

We have done CE and FCC testing but did not do it early enough to print cert on the board. Will respond later with more detail.
Andreas

PHEW!

No one cares about tests and results for CE as long as it is not for special use cases as e.g. medical products.
What they really care about is that someone declared it to be CE conforming and that a CE mark is on the product.
As a company it is easy to import things without CE marker in small volumes when declaring it as sample devices.
Don't know however if it is possible for individuals.
I'm also not sure about development kits, which the Parallella definitive is, as there might be exceptions, even for individuals.
One might argue that a board is just a component and not a complete devices, but computer components, especially PC components are declared to be complete devices.
It is also possible to get conformance declaration to customs when they request it.
I know cases where people went to customs office with a box full of CE stickers.
In any case this has to be redeclared with customs office as they are advised to assume worst case by default.
If this happens to anyone again: Tell them you will get them the missing papers
A CE conformance declaration for such a device is nothing more than vendor statement that the device was manufactured to CE rules.
Since Adapteva even tested the device to be compliant it shouldn't be a problem for them to fax or email you such a statement and no one should complain if you add a CE sticker.