{"id":607,"date":"2015-02-08T15:39:05","date_gmt":"2015-02-08T15:39:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.redrobe.com\/mike\/?p=607"},"modified":"2026-09-21T12:56:27","modified_gmt":"2026-09-21T12:56:27","slug":"raspberry-pi-2-xenon-death-flash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/redrobe.com\/mike\/raspberry-pi-2-xenon-death-flash\/","title":{"rendered":"Raspberry Pi 2 – the XENON DEATH RAY !!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Having just received a new Pi-2 , the updated version of Pi that’s quad core and 6x faster<\/p>\n

I was reading this thread over on the official Pi forum:
\nhttp:\/\/www.raspberrypi.org\/forums\/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=99042<\/a>
\nwhere PeterO found taking a flash photo near the Pi caused it to crash.<\/p>\n

With a bit of experimentation:<\/p>\n

Took photo with Samsung Note2 – Pi 2 remains ok
\nTook photo with Samsung K Zoom – Pi 2 crashes.<\/p>\n

Note the K Zoom has a Xenon flash, unlike most cameraphone’s LED flash.<\/p>\n

Other models of Pi – A\/B\/A+\/B+ are all immune from the “XENON DEATH FLASH”<\/p>\n

I thought it might be the SoC (Pi’s main processor chip) but a huge blob of blu-tack over that wasn’t enough to save it crashing<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

but turning the Pi upside down, did protect it – so we knew it was optical, not EMP<\/p>\n

A raspberry Pi engineer, JDB, then isolated it to U16, the power supply regulator and sure enough a small blob of blue tack on that chip fixed the issue:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Here’s a better view of the problem chip:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

https:\/\/youtu.be\/c7p2OcQ7G58?is=oxaDE-uxvScyCoJN<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Having just received a new Pi-2 , the updated version of Pi that’s quad core and 6x faster I was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":703,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redrobe.com\/mike\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/607","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redrobe.com\/mike\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redrobe.com\/mike\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redrobe.com\/mike\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redrobe.com\/mike\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=607"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/redrobe.com\/mike\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/607\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":731,"href":"https:\/\/redrobe.com\/mike\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/607\/revisions\/731"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redrobe.com\/mike\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redrobe.com\/mike\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redrobe.com\/mike\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redrobe.com\/mike\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}