Our Circuit Playground Inventor’s Kit now supports OS X! The Scratch connection chrome app should automatically update to version 1.7.2. You’ll need to update your Circuit Playground’s firmware version to at least 1.7. This can be accomplished with our new firmware update tool. This easy to use tool is now also available for Windows.

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There were a few minor compromises made to make this possible, namely sensor latency is approximately 3 times higher than it is on Windows. This should not cause any noticeable problems. The example projects and all sensors operate normally. Unfortunately incoming USB reports must be broken into three transfers, instead of just one. In addition OS X appears to cap the rate at which background apps (the Embedit Scratch Connection App in this case) can run. This means the app cannot poll the Circuit Playground’s sensors as often.

Finally, the Scratch Connection App must actually be visible on the screen in order for the sensors to update. OS X severely limits the rate at which apps can update when they are not visible.