The Raspberry Pi 2 is a bit camera shy

The Raspberry Pi 2 is a brilliant evolution to the original Raspberry Pi, featuring a quad core processor and 1GB of RAM making it 6x faster than the previous models. It would seem that not everything is better than before however.

A forum post over in Raspberry Pi official forums  has shown that the Raspberry Pi has a dislike of cameras that use a Xenon flash. Photos taken with said camera flash whilst the Raspberry Pi 2 is switched on, causes the device to lock up and reboot. Seemingly the cause being that the power supply chip is is momentarily thrown off kilter by the flash because of photoelectric sensitivity. Currently only Xenon flashes are known to cause the lock up to occur with a few videos popping up showing the effect.

User tdicola hooked an oscilloscope up to the 3.3V line on his Pi2 to get a reading whilst taking a picture and the results are noticeable. Large peaks and valleys in voltage occur for a noticeable time after the flash with this being the root cause of the Pi’s shutdown and reboot.

Ways to resolve it include covering the U16 chip mentioned in the above thread, with something opaque enough to prevent the light getting through. Blue-Tack and electrical tape are notable mentions, but I would simply suggest getting an opaque case and fitting your Pi into it.

I’m kinda slightly glad I wasn’t able to get one of the first batch now.