Raspberry Pi, the £22 educational computer, has passed testing for the Conformité Européenne (CE) quality-control mark and is ready to hit the UK again.

The Linux devices, which aimed to spur students’ interest in programming, arrived in the UK in the end of March and sold like hot cakes. However, the device then hit a roadblock, requiring to be put through testing to gain its CE mark.

The device was put under testing in the Panasonic lab located in South Wales, after both RS Components and element14/Premier Farnell, the distribution partners, refused to ship the device. Raspberry Pi encountered a manufacturing problem when the Chinese factory responsible for the computers decided to solder in non-magnetic Ethernet jacks instead of magnetic ones.

“The Raspberry Pi had to pass radiated and conducted emissions and immunity tests in a variety of configurations (a single run can take hours), and was subjected to electrostatic discharge (ESD) testing to establish its robustness to being rubbed on a cat”, the Pi Foundation stated on its blog page.

“It’s a long process, involving a scary padded room full of blue cones, turntables that rise and fall on demand, and a thing that looks a lot like a television aerial crossed with Cthulhu”, the blog post continued. The CE mark has made the mini-PC at par with FCC regulations for the USA, as well as for its Australian and Canadian equivalents, paving the way for its distribution in full swing very shortly.