4 ms·

Open source, 3D-printable smart chess board

65 points by bdcravens 2y ago

MS27 2y ago
A comment from the article: "I appreciate your work, but that AI generated image is very disturbing and shouldn't be promoting your own work, which is so much more than an AI slab."
throwaway81523 2y ago
Cute and I'm glad someone is doing that, but it's too small and out of proportion for tournaments etc. You want squares of about 2.25 inches and king height of 3.75 inches, about. If you're going to all the trouble of magnetic sensors and whatnot, you might as well make the board and pieces meet the relevant standards. These days, image recognition is good enough that it's probably feasible to just video the chess game on a non-sensory board, and let software figure out what moves were played. In cases of doubt or dispute (blitz scrambles), humans can examine the video. If anyone cares, the tournament sensory sets that most organizers use are made by DGT and cost around $600 iirc. The magnetic sensor system is very clever and was patented in the 1990s or so, but the patents would be expired by now.
- rurban 2y ago
  Trivial to scale, since it's open source. The C++ code is a bit naive, but easily extendable to use a proper engine. https://github.com/Concept-Bytes/Open-Chess/blob/main/Chess.ino https://github.com/Concept-Bytes/Open-Chess/blob/main/Chess....
  - unwind 2y ago
    PCBs get more expensive with larger area, but it should probably be ok. I hunted down the Gerbers and uploaded to JLCPCB real quick, the cost for the bare PCB at the current size (218x218 mm) is $22 for 5 pieces, excluding shipping. I thought it was interesting to have as a reference. Scaling up the PCB is not possible in their web UI since the Gerbers "lock in" the size, of course.
    - ZiiS 2y ago
      But barely get more expensive if you get 64.
  - Karliss 2y ago
    For a DIY project the problem with scaling up is that ordering 50x50cm PCB is going to be quite pricy. Taking into account minimum order quantity of 5, that's ~$300-$600 according to https://pcbshopper.com/ https://pcbshopper.com/ . And that's blank PCB no components or PCBA. If you can find 10-20 people locally to share a bigger batch (good luck with that) you can get it down to more reasonable $25-$40 per board. To keep this cost effective at DIY level, it needs to be redesigned in a more modular way for larger sizes instead of having one giant PCB. For DIY project might even handwire it using through hole magnet sensors and addressable LED strip. Surprisingly quote for 5x64 ~= 350 2x2cm boards was as low $30-$90. I knew it would be cheaper but didn't expect that much. That's assuming I didn't break the quote calculator by hitting a weird edge case. Happy middle ground would probably be 2x40cm strips one per row or something similar. Also the PCB isn't open source. You only get gerber files not the original project files for schematics or board layout which would be needed to modify it.
    - rurban 2y ago
      I would go without this PCB. Normal wooden pieces with a magnet, and a normal board with a LED would look better, and would be cheaper. Plus a touch or e-paper display (who starts: white or black, ...)
      - rurban 2y ago
        Looked around and found this perfect set. Smart Electronic Chessboard https://a.aliexpress.com/_Ex1ynXa https://a.aliexpress.com/_Ex1ynXa I also found a dutch e-paper board but the Chinese looked much better.
- fjfaase 2y ago
  The DGT Pegasus [1], which is designed for online play as the device presented her, costs 189 Euro. I know one of the founders of DGT and once applied there for a job for the app development, but did not feel that there was a match at the moment also because I am not really into chess. [1] https://dgtshop.com/products/chess-boards/dgt-pegasus https://dgtshop.com/products/chess-boards/dgt-pegasus
  - throwaway81523 2y ago
    That is nice! It's 35cm which is fine for casual games, though online tends to be speed chess and bigger pieces help there. Smaller pieces are fiddlier and easier to fumble if you move too quickly. It would be nice if the Pegasus at least had LEDs at each square to tell you the opponent's move, instead of presumably making you read notation from the screen to transfer the move. But it's a start, and it's fairly affordable. I do think almost all online competitive players don't use anything like that. They play on screen using a full sized screen and a mouse.
    - fjfaase 2y ago
      If you scroll down the page, you will see that it has white light around the piece, which are LEDs, I presume.
ajw287 2y ago
Is no one going to mention that the first picture is AI generated tosh? I understand that generating a picture is easier than taking a nice picture, in a nice place with a a nice camera - but the back row of the board is all white and the second row.. sort of disappears!
- nosrepa 2y ago
  And the knights are messed up
- exitb 2y ago
  It's the new normal.
  - ajw287 2y ago
    Really?! Making this project must have taken tens or hundreds of hours - if they are proud of the work, why not show it off? The video looks like it wasn't faked. Did nobody look at the image after they generated it? If they live in a bedsit and don't have a nice windowsill, they could easily generate the background and if the product is vaporware they could drop a rendering over the top - I think that might actually be easier than training an AI on your product... I'll be grumpy at clouds next!
    - nickthegreek 2y ago
      its a common thing on these sites. People complain about it all the time as alot of the models arent even printable. Some of these sites have a money making systems that are being exploited though. So there is a financial incentive to this as well.
- fxwin 2y ago
  Yea i hate this trend. I can understand why one would do it for text-only blogs/articles, but for something like this? The actual product already looks really good, adjust some colors or lighting and that's perfect for a title image
- 2y ago
axegon_ 2y ago
I've been thinking about something like that for a while but never got to working on it: having to design, order and wait for a pcb to get fabricated and shipped half way across the world, only to find out that you messed something up is insanely off putting. I so wish this process gets democratized in the future the way 3d printing and laser cutting did ~10 years ago.
- CarRamrod 2y ago
  You can use a cheap desktop CNC machine to mill circuit boards.
gorbachev 2y ago
PCBs here: https://www.patreon.com/c/ConceptBytes/posts https://www.patreon.com/c/ConceptBytes/posts
_factor 2y ago
Maybe I’m missing something, but why have a single piece PCB instead of individual parts with a 3D printed slot for the sensor and LED. A few wires later and a model scale up and your chess board can be a different size. I suppose one piece is easier and cleaner, just less flexible.
- Robin_Message 2y ago
  Ordering and wiring up 64 small individual PCBs, vs one PCB, is not a hard choice.
  - lobsterthief 2y ago
    Can confirm—I made a smart chess set like this years back by soldering Hall effect sensors and wires manually to a wood board for 64 squares. Every new soldered connection feels exponential—totally makes sense they didn’t do it this way. I would’ve probably done 4 4x4 PCBs instead so a single damaged PCB could be swapped out.

65 points by bdcravens 2y ago

MS27 2y ago

A comment from the article: "I appreciate your work, but that AI generated image is very disturbing and shouldn't be promoting your own work, which is so much more than an AI slab."

throwaway81523 2y ago

Cute and I'm glad someone is doing that, but it's too small and out of proportion for tournaments etc. You want squares of about 2.25 inches and king height of 3.75 inches, about. If you're going to all the trouble of magnetic sensors and whatnot, you might as well make the board and pieces meet the relevant standards. These days, image recognition is good enough that it's probably feasible to just video the chess game on a non-sensory board, and let software figure out what moves were played. In cases of doubt or dispute (blitz scrambles), humans can examine the video. If anyone cares, the tournament sensory sets that most organizers use are made by DGT and cost around $600 iirc. The magnetic sensor system is very clever and was patented in the 1990s or so, but the patents would be expired by now.

rurban 2y ago
Trivial to scale, since it's open source. The C++ code is a bit naive, but easily extendable to use a proper engine. https://github.com/Concept-Bytes/Open-Chess/blob/main/Chess.ino https://github.com/Concept-Bytes/Open-Chess/blob/main/Chess....
- unwind 2y ago
  PCBs get more expensive with larger area, but it should probably be ok. I hunted down the Gerbers and uploaded to JLCPCB real quick, the cost for the bare PCB at the current size (218x218 mm) is $22 for 5 pieces, excluding shipping. I thought it was interesting to have as a reference. Scaling up the PCB is not possible in their web UI since the Gerbers "lock in" the size, of course.
  - ZiiS 2y ago
    But barely get more expensive if you get 64.
- Karliss 2y ago
  For a DIY project the problem with scaling up is that ordering 50x50cm PCB is going to be quite pricy. Taking into account minimum order quantity of 5, that's ~$300-$600 according to https://pcbshopper.com/ https://pcbshopper.com/ . And that's blank PCB no components or PCBA. If you can find 10-20 people locally to share a bigger batch (good luck with that) you can get it down to more reasonable $25-$40 per board. To keep this cost effective at DIY level, it needs to be redesigned in a more modular way for larger sizes instead of having one giant PCB. For DIY project might even handwire it using through hole magnet sensors and addressable LED strip. Surprisingly quote for 5x64 ~= 350 2x2cm boards was as low $30-$90. I knew it would be cheaper but didn't expect that much. That's assuming I didn't break the quote calculator by hitting a weird edge case. Happy middle ground would probably be 2x40cm strips one per row or something similar. Also the PCB isn't open source. You only get gerber files not the original project files for schematics or board layout which would be needed to modify it.
  - rurban 2y ago
    I would go without this PCB. Normal wooden pieces with a magnet, and a normal board with a LED would look better, and would be cheaper. Plus a touch or e-paper display (who starts: white or black, ...)
    - rurban 2y ago
      Looked around and found this perfect set. Smart Electronic Chessboard https://a.aliexpress.com/_Ex1ynXa https://a.aliexpress.com/_Ex1ynXa I also found a dutch e-paper board but the Chinese looked much better.
fjfaase 2y ago
The DGT Pegasus [1], which is designed for online play as the device presented her, costs 189 Euro. I know one of the founders of DGT and once applied there for a job for the app development, but did not feel that there was a match at the moment also because I am not really into chess. [1] https://dgtshop.com/products/chess-boards/dgt-pegasus https://dgtshop.com/products/chess-boards/dgt-pegasus
- throwaway81523 2y ago
  That is nice! It's 35cm which is fine for casual games, though online tends to be speed chess and bigger pieces help there. Smaller pieces are fiddlier and easier to fumble if you move too quickly. It would be nice if the Pegasus at least had LEDs at each square to tell you the opponent's move, instead of presumably making you read notation from the screen to transfer the move. But it's a start, and it's fairly affordable. I do think almost all online competitive players don't use anything like that. They play on screen using a full sized screen and a mouse.
  - fjfaase 2y ago
    If you scroll down the page, you will see that it has white light around the piece, which are LEDs, I presume.

ajw287 2y ago

Is no one going to mention that the first picture is AI generated tosh? I understand that generating a picture is easier than taking a nice picture, in a nice place with a a nice camera - but the back row of the board is all white and the second row.. sort of disappears!

nosrepa 2y ago
And the knights are messed up
exitb 2y ago
It's the new normal.
- ajw287 2y ago
  Really?! Making this project must have taken tens or hundreds of hours - if they are proud of the work, why not show it off? The video looks like it wasn't faked. Did nobody look at the image after they generated it? If they live in a bedsit and don't have a nice windowsill, they could easily generate the background and if the product is vaporware they could drop a rendering over the top - I think that might actually be easier than training an AI on your product... I'll be grumpy at clouds next!
  - nickthegreek 2y ago
    its a common thing on these sites. People complain about it all the time as alot of the models arent even printable. Some of these sites have a money making systems that are being exploited though. So there is a financial incentive to this as well.
fxwin 2y ago
Yea i hate this trend. I can understand why one would do it for text-only blogs/articles, but for something like this? The actual product already looks really good, adjust some colors or lighting and that's perfect for a title image
2y ago

axegon_ 2y ago

I've been thinking about something like that for a while but never got to working on it: having to design, order and wait for a pcb to get fabricated and shipped half way across the world, only to find out that you messed something up is insanely off putting. I so wish this process gets democratized in the future the way 3d printing and laser cutting did ~10 years ago.

CarRamrod 2y ago
You can use a cheap desktop CNC machine to mill circuit boards.

gorbachev 2y ago

PCBs here: https://www.patreon.com/c/ConceptBytes/posts https://www.patreon.com/c/ConceptBytes/posts

_factor 2y ago

Maybe I’m missing something, but why have a single piece PCB instead of individual parts with a 3D printed slot for the sensor and LED. A few wires later and a model scale up and your chess board can be a different size. I suppose one piece is easier and cleaner, just less flexible.

Robin_Message 2y ago
Ordering and wiring up 64 small individual PCBs, vs one PCB, is not a hard choice.
- lobsterthief 2y ago
  Can confirm—I made a smart chess set like this years back by soldering Hall effect sensors and wires manually to a wood board for 64 squares. Every new soldered connection feels exponential—totally makes sense they didn’t do it this way. I would’ve probably done 4 4x4 PCBs instead so a single damaged PCB could be swapped out.