Should embedded card stay on static protective bag ?

take an ohm meter to the bag and you may find that the bag is barely conductive, The biggest problem you should have with static is when the device is hooked up to a power supply and is grounded thru a number of different instruments. In the winter you will be zapping the board on a daily basis.

I have never dammaged a device by zapping it in the last 5 years. The parts you have to watch out for are devices that are designed to run at very low power levels like real time clock chips, battery-backed RAM and maybe MCUs that draw a few micro amps. These parts can be dammaged easily.

-howy

I think:

It should come out of the bag and stay out when you're ready to use it. It should stay in the bag until you're ready to plug it up and power it up (I think you're past this point). It won't much matter electrically if it's in the bag, because the bag's resistance is rather high (in the high megohms, but this is still plenty low enough to discharge any static charges) and won't conduct electricity enough to affect most circuitry. Try measuring the resistance of the bag. It's a lot higher than your the resistance of your skin. It should stay out of the bag when powered up because it will hold heat in and if the board dissipates significant amounts of heat, it could overheat in the bag.

I think that's everything I think on the matter.

Well, no. The main problem with static discharge is when you walk across the room and touch something such a gate input. The first thing you should touch when you arrive at a workstation is a "ground" connection TO THE DEVICE YOU'RE GOING TO WORK ON. This would be the V- connection of a bench power supply you're running it on, or the metal shell of a DB-9 that gives a serial or programming connection between the board and a desktop computer. Perhaps the next thing you should touch is a wrist grounding strap as you put it on (these things have about a 1 meg resistance to actual ground, so if you end up touching

220V with your other hand you may feel a slight shock instead of a deadly one). If you disconnect the board it and move it to another lab, or ship it across the world, it would be a Good Thing to put it in the bag as soon as you disconnect it, but not when it sits connected (powered pr not) on the bench overnight. Static problems come up in handling the thing, not when it sits still.

Thanks - yeah I did take a ohmmeter to it and was surprised that it barely registered (it was an old analog one). I think your answer and Ben Bradley's give me the info I need ! Thanks a ton!