I realise it has been a little while without any updates over here. And why not write a bit on one of my favourite subjects.
The EU regulations is a collection of regulations adopted by the members of the EU and most often the EEA, and our dear friends from the mountains (Swiss).
You would think these documents are pretty annoying to read and, to be fair, they make for excellent bedtime reading, but the details and the craftsmanship of those documents are sooo very good. I come to appreciate the efforts put into making well understandable sentences, that won't be confusing to people reading them; take that French Tax law; and all the little compromise and future direction the document can take. Just beautiful.
I guess at this point, you are probably not sure if I am sarcastic or not. For the record I am not, I am truly amazed with it. And let's go through an example.
The development of renewable forms of energy is one of the Union’s key objectives, and the contribution made by renewable energy sources to environmental and climate objectives is crucial. Directive 2009/28/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 April 2009 on the promotion of the use of energy from renewable sources (4) recalls that there should be coherence between those objectives and other Union environmental legislation. Consequently, this Directive should not prevent the development of renewable energy technologies that have no negative impact on health and the environment and that are sustainable and economically viable.
From the ROHS documentation.
These are guidelines for the future in order to prevent hazardous products to be sold to consumers in the EU. And it goes through all the exceptions, and establishes measures to update the regulation itself, and what compromises to make in order to develop the economies.
Then they go into exact details on what is needed to be compliant, for example for power supplies, a power supply need to have certain efficiencies depending on its power outputs. under 6V / 500ma it can't have more than 0.3W of losses, I believe.
Once I've read some DO-something, and that was the worst document to read, 60 pages of nothing. Just things like : "make sure it doesn't explode" or "careful with high voltage", I am exaggerating, but sometimes it comes close to this.
Ahhh anyway, I rambled enough. Go down some rabbit hole from some regulation when you're bored.