Project
| # | Title | Team Members | TA | Documents | Sponsor |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 49 | Move Displaying Chess Board |
Jeanjuella Tipan Matthew Trela Tim Chen |
Wenjing Song | design_document1.pdf final_paper1.pdf presentation1.pptx proposal1.pdf video |
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| # Move Displaying Chess Board Team Members: - Matthew Trela (mtrela2) - Tim Chen (taianc2) - Jeanjuella Tipan (jtipa2) # Problem Chess is a game with a high barrier to entry and often the hardest part of the game for kids to pick up is how the pieces move, where a piece can move, and if a move is legal. Existing boards that tackle this problem are very expensive and not a practical option for an elementary or middle school chess club. # Solution A physical chess board which shows all legal moves for a piece once it is picked up. The movement of pieces will be detected with a sensor array of reed switches and a board state in memory. The squares will be lit up by an addressable strip of LED lights cut into 8 equal sections and daisy chained together. This chessboard will also optionally display the best move with a small chess engine in the MCU’s flash memory. The chess board will include a UI to turn best moves on and off, to handle the edge case of promoting to something besides a queen, and to display information like if an illegal move is played. # Solution Components ## Subsystem 1, Piece Detection Array This subsystem detects the location of each piece using magnets attached to the bottom of the pieces and an array of 64 reed switches. Since the microcontroller can not handle 64 separate sensors we will use 4 I2C GPIO expanders. - Reed Switches: Standex-Meder Electronics SW GP560/15-20 AT - Magnets: Magnet Applications N42P062062 - I2C 16 input GPIO expander: Microchip Technology MCP23017-E/ML ## Subsystem 2, LED Move Display This subsystem provides feedback to the user. An addressable LED strip is placed under the board in 8 segments, one for each rank. The segments will be connected with clip connectors for replacing each segment when necessary. When a piece is lifted as detected by subsystem 1, the MCU calculates the legal moves and sends a signal to the LEDs to illuminate target squares in a specified color (for example: green for legal moves, red for capturable piece). - Addressable LED strip: SEZO WS2812B ECO LED Strip Light 16.4 FT - 3Pin LED Strip Connector: DFRobot FIT0861 ## Subsystem 3, Microcontroller and UI The microcontroller will handle all of the logic of our chess system. There will be a simple control loop which polls every sensor so see if the board state has changed. If a piece has been picked up, the microcontroller uses the current board state to see what piece was picked up, what its legal moves are, and then controls the LED strip accordingly. We will use logic to check for error or desync and have a recovery protocol through the UI if detected. This control loop can be interrupted by input from the UI like to turn on best moves. UI is a monochrome OLED screen with some buttons for selecting options. When best moves are on, the board puts the current state into a small chess engine locally stored in the MCU and displays the best move using the LEDs. This happens every time the board state changes. - MCU: ESP32-WROOM-32-N4 - OLED Display: UCTRONICS 0.96 Inch OLED Module 12864 128x64 ## Subsystem 4, Power supply A portable power supply is used to power the LEDs, sensors, microcontroller, and UI display. A capacitor prevents sudden surges or dips in from crashing the microcontroller. - Power bank: VOLTME Portable charger, 10000mAh 5V/3A - Capacitor: Chemi-Con ESMG160ETD102MJ16S # Criterion For Success Describe high-level goals that your project needs to achieve to be effective. These goals need to be clearly testable and not subjective. - LEDs can be selectively turned on by the MCU for all 64 squares - Move display and best move display can be turned on and off with the UI controls - All legal moves are accurately displayed by LEDs, including rules such as en passente, castling, and the first move of pawns - Pieces can be detected accurately when lifted off, being displayed on the UI display - Detect pieces picked up and show legal moves in under 1 second - Display the best move in under 3 seconds - We can detect and recover from two pieces on the same square - We can detect and recover from multiple pieces being picked up at the same time and switched # Alternatives Existing solutions include commercial products that cost around $300 or more. They perform almost the exact same functions as what we propose to do. It is hard to determine the exact sensor method other boards use but we saw RFID and other more extensive methods. Our implementation attempts to use the simplest possible sensing apparatus and make up the difference in hardware. There does not exist a product that is both affordable and offers the functionality of displaying moves on the board. |
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