Now, the sensors under each board can be hall sensors or reed relays. So, using magnets seemed to be the best trade-off. For the latter, a web interface must be implemented in order to configure the board with the starting position. The starting position can be a new game or a custom position. The logic will keep track of the moves and we'll always know the current position. The problem with this approach is that we always have to start from a known position. The other possibility is to use magnets attached to each piece and a sensor under each square to detect it. This is, probably, the best way of doing the detection but, also, the most difficult to implement for a hobbyist, like I am. Each piece has a RFID tag under it and the board will properly detect the piece type and color. The really expensive boards on the market use some sort of RFID technology to perform chessmen detection. Also, the chessmen are weighted and feel very well balanced. The board looks pretty nice but the top is 3mm plywood which, as you'll see later, will prove to be quite beneficial. The square size is 58mm and the size of the king is 96mm. It was designed for inter/intra board communications and, with this in mind, I went ahead and acquired a foldable number 6 chess set (board and pieces) for about 51 Euros. The only issue was that I had to split the electronics somehow for each half of the board and be able to communicate with the main board in order to send sensors' states and get commands to switch square LEDs on/off. So, I could use the box for the electronics. When folded, these form a box where you can place the chessmen. In the end, after analysing every possibility on the market (well, almost), the best option was a foldable chess board. The ones I found were either too small (3cm x 3cm squares) or they had no box to hide all the electronics in. And the squares must be large enough to be able to fit a sensor and an LED under each.Īfter lots of web searching, I wasn't able to find a single piece chess board with enough space under it for the electronics. However, for this project, the board must have enough space under it for the electronics to fit in. Do I really need the board to be that big? I'd prefer it smaller, more compact, so I can store it somewhere when not used. So, a competition chess board should be at least 50cm x 50cm.
FIDE (World Chess Federation) states that the size of a square should be between 5 to 6 cm. There are a myriad of sizes to choose from. This one was a trickier subject than I first thought. So, now what? Where do I start? How do I design this thing? The best I've found, and probably the only one worth looking at, was more than 3000$. Well, it turns out there are very capable products out there. I'm an engineer alright, and I like building things, but if the product I want to build is already on the market and it's cheap enough, I'd rather buy it than spend a lot of time and money re-inventing the wheel. But before starting any actual work, I did some research to see if I could buy such a chess board.
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These were a real pain for her to learn how to properly move.Īs a consequence, the engineer in me started to contemplate at building a physical chess board that could help kids learn easier and, of course, be capable enough to even play against it. I realised that it would be much easier for her if she could actually have a chess board that showed her the allowed moves for each chessman. Well, about 6 years ago I became a father and, when my kid was about 4 and a half years old, I started to teach her how to play chess. So, who needs a physical chess board anymore? Right? Nowadays, you can even play on your smartphone. Then computers started to evolve and you could play against the computer, which was great. When I was a kid I used to play on my own because neither my father nor my sister wanted, or had time, to play with me. The idea for building an electronic chess board, that you could actually play with, came to me a long time ago. But, before you go further, you might have a look at the last section, where I've put some demos, so that you have an idea what the end result looks like! This is going to be a very long tutorial.
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