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And...we are off

Wed, 25 Feb 2026 12:35:49 +0000

ok first uploads are done, I will do a few tests to make sure everything is ok and futher uploads witll be posted then tested in sequence.

Sorry again for all the horrible delays, lots of reasons, but none which excuse you having paid for a book with no software to download, I will do my best to give you a lot of good content over and above what the book provides in the comming months.

For now the PhotoFrame is uploaded
https://www.scratchpadgames.net/pi4-download-page.html

I am checking the double buffer test as well and will update that very soon before I upload Invaders and Kamakazi.

Setting up Visual Studio and Raspberry Pi 400

Thu, 15 Jan 2026 11:27:23 +0000

screen.png (Size: 267.07 KB / Downloads: 4)
Allrighty!
Finally did it. It works. Had to do a 'Set as Startup Project', copy the headers to /usr/include and it showed up on my Pi.
Now I'll get a cup of coffee, deserved it. After that I can continue knowing things work ok.
Brian, thanks again for all the help. Good luck with settings things up there.

Say Hello

Thu, 08 Jan 2026 05:15:32 +0000

I'm not seeing a lot of activity on the forum which is a bit surprising, are people having problems signing up? I added an extra mega easy question to the sign up system, so it should be simple, though you won't currently get a notification when you sign up

if anyone is struggling to sign up, just mail me at brian at scratchpadgames dot net and I will investigate

But if you do sign in ok, come here and say hello, tell us a bit about yourself and your reasons for joining up to this forum.

thanks

Brian

My PC won't connect to my Pi using a network cable

Tue, 30 Dec 2025 16:39:20 +0000

As I am resetting a lot of my equipment, this old issue cropped up again for me. It happens every so often for some, not all, of my students too.
It's basically due to both your PC and Pi attempting to get an IP address from a DHCP server that doesn't exist in a direct connection, so neither can establish a proper network link.

There are 3 solutions to this:

1st If you can, buy a small network switch. When both machines are connected via a switch which has access to your network, they can find your network's DHCP server. This is my personally preferred method, especially when I have a few different machines I want to target - a switch avoids lots of messy unplugging/plugging.

2nd Connect both your PC and Pi via ethernet to your network router. That way both machines get IPs from your router's DHCP server.

3rd A little less elegant but effective: set both devices to static IPs on their own private network. This is fiddly because you need to type commands into the Pi's terminal, but it works well.
On the Pi, carefully enter these two commands:

sudo nmcli con add type ethernet ifname eth0 con-name wired-static ipv4.addresses 192.168.2.1/24 ipv4.method manual autoconnect yes
sudo nmcli con up wired-static

This assigns 192.168.2.1 to your Pi. Now set your PC's ethernet to a static IP in the same range:

Win + X → Network Connections
Right-click Ethernet → Properties
Double-click Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4) (< Select "Use the following IP address":

IP address: 192.168.2.2
Subnet mask: 255.255.255.0
Gateway: leave blank
DNS: leave blank

Click OK

Now your wired connection should work!
You can also enable WiFi on both devices for internet access - they'll route traffic appropriately.
While you can use raspberrypi.local (or whatever your Pi's hostname is) to connect, using the IP address 192.168.2.1 directly is faster and guarantees you're using the wired connection.

Hopefully you won't have a problem - it's only a small number of setups that have this issue, but this solution should fix it.

Actually there is a 4th option, just make sure both systems are on the same WiFi network.. WiFi these days is impressively fast, but... wired is quite significanly faster and you will feel that difference if you are doing a lot of debugging or sending data back and forward.

Remember to sign up

Sat, 13 Dec 2025 16:52:58 +0000

I hope you've been enjoying the book, but at this immediate moment, there's a lack of content on the support site. I have chased the site hosts again and they are trying to trace the problem. But I can offer some help and some code samples on this forum while we try to get thigns fixed.

Please sign up, say hello and I'll try to help you get through the book

Content updates almost ready

Thu, 04 Dec 2025 23:18:13 +0000

4/12/25

The book launches tomorrow, so its time to get the videos and source files sorted, there may however be some delay again.. Im still getting some issues from the site when it comes to uploading large files, it seems to fail, a help request has gone to the hosting company.. Hopefully I can get it resolved and start uploading videos and chapter contents soon.

In the meantime if you have an early copy of the book, please log in, say hello and I'll update you when things are finally resolved.

Visual Studio 2026 Insider

Thu, 04 Dec 2025 23:13:16 +0000

There's a new version... of course there is just as the book launches..

But aside from some cosmetic changes, and I assume, a bit of internal shuffling around, its not massively different, just some navigation changes to panels. It still loads and runs all VS2022 projects fine.

That said for the forseeable future I will continue to use Visual Studio 2022 for all project. I'll experiment more with the 2026 and transition when I am confident everything works

Current OS issues

Sat, 22 Nov 2025 20:36:30 +0000

Trixie on Pi

Trixie uses Wayland as default but it will emulate X11, as a result projects all seem to work fine, but may stretch window sizes from the standard 1024x768 to full screen.. Its not a major issue, you can still set X11 in the raspi-config tool via the terminal.

We're back, well, I am at least, please come join me

Fri, 14 Nov 2025 12:52:42 +0000

I am so so sorry, but due to a combination of my being a bit stupid and our webhost being slightly more stupid, the website and its forums were totally trashed.

We have to start again, hopefully a last time and also this time with backups.... I did at least have website backups so the update to the website is continuing, and we should be fully live by December 4th, the day before the book launches.

TLDR the webhosts filled the webspace with log files, the website was not expanded as I had asked, and the website locked, when I tried to back up it destroyed the forums and I had to delete it and then shout at the host company to get the space I paid for allocated to this site.......damn

Please log in, please post ask questions, please provide answers and lets try to make this a useful resource for anyone coding on SBC's

It will take me a little while to get things back to normal, so please be patient with me