Raspberry Pi boards are getting easier and easier to find. Thanks to the large stores and contacts that the Raspberry Pi Foundation is making. But it is true that when we surf the Internet we find boards of different prices and with images a little different from what the Raspberry Pi usually are. This means that the boards are not original, but they are copies or they are not really Raspberry Pi boards and they want to sell them under that name.
So far no big sales of fake Raspberry Pi boards have appeared, but they do exist. That is why we are going to tell you how to know if we have an original Raspberry Pi board or not.
First of all we have to know the origin of the plate. The first Raspberry Pi boards said "Made in China", but later the production moved to the United Kingdom and in models like Raspberry Pi 3 or 2 we will find on one side the imprint of "Made in UK".
The original Raspberry Pi board always has a Broadcom SoC
The second element that we have to look at is the silkscreen of the strawberry as well as the copyright of Raspberry Pi. These elements are important and all the latest models of original plates have it, but it is something that can also be counterfeited. The same does not happen with the printing of the SoC. Broadcom is the official Raspberry Pi SoC, so any other SoC indicates that we are facing a fake. Not only will we find the official Broadcom logo but below we will find a code that will start with the letters BCM.
The seals of CE and FCC are elements that we must also look at. The acronym CE indicates that they are not only distributed in Europe but that they comply with all the quality requirements of the European Union, the original Raspberry Pi board complies with it, so we have to find the seal. We also have to find the FCC identification number, something that does not affect European citizens but that the original Raspberry Pi board does.
Differentiating an original Raspberry Pi board from a fake is something easy, but it is also something that we do not normally review and that can cause us problems, such as an improper configuration, a failed project or simply that the board burns due to poor power management. In any case, it seems that we have to be attentive if we do not want to be screwed Do not you think?