I’m still waiting on my Pi to arrive, but I came across this great video by Dave over at EEVblog that covers a very interesting problem with the new Pi’s.
The trouble is that when exposed to light from a xenon flash (typical camera flash), the Pi shuts down and requires a hard reset to come back up.
This problem is caused by the photoelectric effect, which allows things like image sensors to work. Based on Dave’s experiments, it seems that the problem is from a voltage regulator chip with an exposed die. The exposed die appears to allow the photoelectric effect to cause the regulator to drop out just long enough for the system to fail.
