Circuit Playground Issues with Chromebooks

CS Discoveries Coding and Debugging Help
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1

I am curious if anyone else is experiencing issues with the Adafruit Circuit Playgrounds in Unit 6 and their Chromebooks. We’ve been having problems with the boards dropping their connections multiple times in a period and having to re-detect, unplug the board and plug it back in, switch Chromebooks, etc. I didn’t have this issue last year when my classes used PCs, so I’m not sure if it’s just a Chromebook issue or if there’s something going on with the software or the board itself. Anyone else having problems? Do you know of any solutions to this problem? Thanks!

2

Yes, we have been having that issue as well. Students have had to refresh the page for the code to run sometimes too.

3

I’ve been having the same problems. We have made it to Lesson 6 of the unit with persistence and gritting my teeth. I never thought to look to see if others teaching CSD were having the same issues until speaking with our school tech support today. I was thinking it was a problem with our school chromebook installation/interface as so much is locked down here.

Turns out I’m not alone, so I’ve reported it as a bug to Code.org. We get things to work some of the time by refreshing the page, switching USB ports, or restarting Chromebooks. It will work for awhile, then we need to persist through the problem solving process to reconnect again.

It seems to work better on the Macbooks (I have a class set) so I am having the tech support office here push the Maker app to those devices for Monday. I would prefer to use the Chromebooks though, as the students are each issued one that travels with them to all classes.

4

Here is the response I got from Code.org. Not ideal, but hopefully this helps.

Hi,

Thank you for reporting this issue! Sorry to hear you are experiencing connectivity problems between Chromebooks and the Adafruit Circuit Playground. We are actively working to fix this issue. In the meantime, here is a workaround you can use in your classroom so your students can continue using the Adafruit Circuit Playground.

** The Reset button is currently broken on Chromebooks on Circuit Playground levels. Clicking it will cause connectivity issues between the Chromebook and the Adafruit Circuit Playground. If your students need to use the Reset button to test their code, ask them to refresh their browser window instead.*
** If your students do click the Reset button and discover that Circuit Playground no longer works, use the following steps to fix Circuit Playground.*

    1. Click the RESET button in the middle of the Adafruit Circuit Playground board. All lights will turn green.*
    1. Click the RESET button in the middle of the Adafruit Circuit Playground board again. The lights will flash in a rainbow pattern.*
    1. Refresh your browser window.*
    1. Click Run in the Circuit Playground level.*

We realize these steps are not optimal to use in the classroom and we’re working to fix this issue. Thank you for reporting this, and we appreciate the feedback!