DGT board and piece set arrive -- all issues resolved

[sje]

I've been on the fence for about a year on this purchase, and your information convinced me to "take the plunge"!

I purchased the walnut board, timeless pieces, XL clock.

I was on that same proverbial fence for an even longer time due to the lack of native Mac OS/X support. The lure of using a piece recognition board as a testing tool for my program Symbolic decided the case.

I'll be getting an extra DGT compatible piece set as a spare. Perhaps the DGT Timeless set, although I don't care much for its German knights. Or maybe the DGT Classic set, although I don't care for ebonized pieces. Or possibly making my own set once I've determined how to cheaply clone the LC piece circuitry needed.

I've also got this crazy idea to make my own piece recognition board using a RaspPi plus some easily obtainable, not too expensive components. It could host its own set of chess programs, have a LED square indication array, and WiFi for connectivity. If successful, I could distribute a parts list, the open code, and building instructions.

[ifekali]

lack of native Mac OS/X support.

I'm running the DGT board on the mac just fine. Here's me running picochess:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/kc6tr322r09c7 ... .17.31.png
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ab0q7gdifpi6z ... .16.59.png

1.25 Mnodes per second on my 8-core oldie mac. Not bad. Me happy:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/7gwpb3o6wpofb ... .35.57.png

Why DGT doesn't publish a driver for mac is beyond me. Mind you, their LiveChess software works just fine with the boards:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/a4ztmcq4p5ppl ... .28.42.png

Or an iPad app to connect to their boards via bluetooth. An app to control Revelation II via bluetooth. A clock with a http server one could fiddle with via browser. A box for chessmen with a clock built into the box. I got ideas.

But no, this is what they "developed" this week:

http://dgtprojects.com/site/index.php/p ... dgt-clocks

-Izmet

[Bryan Whitby]

I've also got this crazy idea to make my own piece recognition board using a RaspPi plus some easily obtainable, not too expensive components. It could host its own set of chess programs, have a LED square indication array, and WiFi for connectivity. If successful, I could distribute a parts list, the open code, and building instructions.

I've built a couple of Raspberry PI chess computers running Stockfish and connected to a Teensy USB Development Board that communicates between the board and the PI.
Have a read here, Max hasn't gone as far as you are suggesting but he's 50% there.
http://www.chess.fortherapy.co.uk

Bryan

[sje]

I haven't yet tried the dgtnix code on Mac OS/X. I do know that bugs have been noted with this while using the identical code for OS/X and Linux (the code worked on the latter).

This will take some time.

[sje]

I have already done a C++ reed sense interface when I got my Novag Citrine some years ago, and used it to play several 100 game matches of the old Symbolic vs the Citrine.

I may incorporate reed sense as part of my interface. Also, there's the possibility of using a 16 LED rank/file indicator configuration.

My interface code will be reentrant, so more than one board can be connected at the same time (maybe a maximum of two). The interface will retain some state information about each board and this will help make different board models look the same. I want each different kind of board to be able to report a move using properly formed SAN instead of using coordinate pairs. Also, a position should be reported using FEN and not a raw board data dump. So the interface has to track side to move, castling availability, en passant target, etc.

[sje]

I'm running the DGT board on the mac just fine. Here's me running picochess:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/kc6tr322r09c7 ... .17.31.png

For some reason, it appears that png images can't be embedded here.

See programming discussion at http://www.hiarcs.net/forums/viewtopic.php?p=64101