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I've always wondered what the FCC status was of devices like Sparkfun's esp8266 based boards. [0] They are all based around the same ultra cheap Chinese wifi chip. Seems like trying to make vendors lock down their consumer routers is pointless when the market is flooded with products that don't have such restrictions.

[0] https://www.sparkfun.com/products/13287

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SDRs that can transmit at wifi bandwidths are also getting cheaper by the day.

And don't forget the billions of wifi devices already out there that aren't subject to this restriction...

I really don't know what or who they are trying to protect.

I don't think it's about protection; it's power needing to stay relevant.

If we let this happen, they will continue to roll more and more things into their regulatory sphere. It's almost a law of nature. Eventually they will tell SDR owners that they need a 'license' (because bla bla safety).

The same "logic" will be applied to other gadgets. Open source cars, open baseband, and ultimately, open brain implants. Casualties in the war on general purpose computing.

It seems that there's an enormous amount of awesome stuff that comes from China these day that U.S companies would never make because they're scared of the feds. Another example would be these new highly advanced consumer drones.

This was an incredible run-on sentence.

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