I’m a new member here and just took the Big Lasers course last night. I wanted to drop in and introduce myself. I’m Will Fox, I’ve been making things since 2019 (see my earlier clocks at foxieclock dot com) and… I’ve just put up the teaser website with my new project, the world’s first edge-lit, open-source, smart chessboard, which I call the Foxie Litch. The site is at foxielitch dot com.
I’m hoping by sharing this that I can get feedback and suggestions for every aspect of the manufacturing. I’m currently using SendCutSend to cut and powder-coat a steel sheet backplate, and they also laser cut my prototype acrylic top piece and chess pieces, although I now plan to do most of the laser cutting at ASMBLY with Tarkin and Dorian. I’m also looking for help for how to launch this effectively while staying sane. It’s the biggest project I’ve done so far and I’m really proud of it, but I also have a full-time job and juggling everything is probably something many of you have experience with
Thanks for looking, and thanks for existing! I am a huge fan of this community and of ASMBLY and I’m excited to be here.
I checked out your website and thats incredible! I’d definitely suggest posting a picture here to get people excited. Love the goth aesthetic to the pieces as well.
How do you keep track of color though when a piece is moved? I’d imagine each piece is individually id’ed and given a tag at the games start. But then what hardware on the piece is giving it its id, and how would you initially set it?
Hi, thanks for checking it out! I’m not able to attach pics to the post for some reason. Not sure why.
To answer your question, the pieces all have a magnet on the bottom, which is detected by a hall sensor in the center of each square. The firmware keeps track of where every piece is. You can play human vs human, or human vs computer, and it will play at up to a ~1900 ELO rating (configurable difficulty from 1-11), fully offline. I’m using an ESP32-S3 to control everything, on a fully custom PCB that I designed and had produced through JLCPCB. Questions are welcome! I don’t have the designs available publicly yet, but I will when I launch the pilot run (~40 boards) in April.
Had the same problem with uploading pics when i started. U need to reply/ react to a few posts first to convince the system your not a bot. Then it will let you upload pics.
So can you only remove one piece at a time then? Because if you remove 2 how would the board know which one is placed again first?
Also, how does taking pieces work? Is it like, if black piece removed, then white piece removed, the next placed piece becomes black? If so, what if black B7xC6, but the player misplaces the pawn on C7, then they remove it again to place in C6. Is the pawn black or white?
And when playing against the pc, how does it let you know what piece its moving?
Technically, you can swap the pieces around as much as you want, but the firmware knows which piece is supposed to be in which spot. When you pick up pieces, it shows you the valid moves for the piece in the current game state – so if you put a pawn where the queen is supposed to be, and you pick up the pawn, it will show moves for a queen, because that is what is actually in that spot within the game engine.
The piece detection is quite robust – placing extra pieces on the board, or picking up pieces from the other side that aren’t legal captures will notify the users that the board is in an invalid state and flash the offending square(s).
Captures are also robust. You can pick up your piece first, or the opponent’s piece, and it will function properly. Same with castling, and en passant. Though I’m far from being a chess master, I do know the game well. I’ve spent a lot of time play testing and making sure all the edge cases work.
When playing against the CPU, the board highlights the piece that the CPU wants to move, as well as the square it is moving to. It’s very intuitive. I don’t have a video of this yet, but I’ll be happy to demo the board to you next time we’re both at ASMBLY.
I plan to be up there on Tuesday evening to do some laser cutting on Tarkin (I’ve booked 6-9pm). I will likely get there a bit early.
