Cheap handheld console, Scratch 2.0 using Flash in PIXEL and a new C programming book in today's Raspberry Pi Roundup

Cheap Handheld Console

Joe Foulkes wanted to create an as cheap-as-possible gaming console. So, he took an old Samsung Galaxy box, a Pi Zero, some prototyping board and some other components and created BotchBoy. The build cost is about £15/$20 and is easily achievable by most beginner hackers with rudimentary soldering skills. Take a look here or view a video of it in action below.

Flash and Scratch 2.0

Albert Hickey wondered if Chromium (being the new default browser for Raspbian) would support Flash. Most specifically, he wondered if Scratch 2.0 through the browser would work. To start with, it wouldn’t. However, following an update/upgrade, it suddenly did! You can see it in action in his YouTube video (above). Simon Long from the Foundation provided clarification:

Yes, the Flash player was added today. (It’s in the package rpi-chromium-mods, which is already installed on PIXEL, so an apt-get dist-upgrade will pick up the Flash update.)

It is the latest version of the PepperFlash player from Adobe – we’ll be updating it every time Adobe do from hereon.

The PepperFlash binary is ARMv7 only, so it’ll only work on Pi2 and Pi3, but Scratch is pretty usable on Pi3.

Learn to Code in C

The MagPi has announced the publication of a new volume in the Essentials series. Called “Learn to Code with C”, the book is written by Foundation developer Simon Long and covers the following topics:

• Create variables & do arithmetic
• Control the flow of your C programs
• For loops and case statements
• Understand and create functions
• Work with arrays and strings
• Interpreting user input
• and much more

You can buy it from us or download it for free from The MagPi or get it via their apps.