We earlier reported that the new Raspberry Pi 2 was crashing when exposed to xenon flashes and it appeared to be a minor issue. However, the Raspberry Pi foundation has come out to explain what happens when the tiny computer is exposed to certain bright lights; mostly to reassure users about their brand new Raspberry Pi 2.
As suspected, the culprit is the U16 chip that lies between the USB power supply and HDMI port. It is apparently susceptible to a rare physics phenomenon known as a photonic effect, where metals emit electronics when expose to large amounts of photons of a specific wavelength (i.e colour).
This particular component is affected by flashes of high-intensity, long-wave light; which mainly comes from xenon type flashes, but can also come from laser pointers. What exactly happens to the U16 chip is still unknown, but it is likely that the photonic effect causes a short circuit of some sort between the components.
The Raspberry Pi foundation points out that it requires a lot of high intensity light for the photonic effect to take place, and that most light sources will not trigger it. In other words, the Raspberry Pi 2 is unafffected by just bright lights and can safely be used in direct sunlight and with normal indoor lighting.
The foundation is still investigating the full extent of the problem to figure out how to stop it from happening. Although it does second the recommendation that a blob of Blu-Tac on the component solving the issue. It also admits that one user fix of covering the chip in bread also happens to work.
[Source: Raspberry Pi]
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