On Piece Recognition Chess Boards

[Steve B]

long before the DGT board was released for sale ..piece recognition technology was utilized in dedicated computers

the Tasc computer chess systems and the Mephisto Bavaria board
the Bavaria was released in 1990 while the Tasc came out in 1993

interestingly..Tasc was found to be in copyright infringement and forced to discontinue its sale of the Smartboard(20 and 30) which ultimately forced the company to close its doors

Bavaria Board:


Tasc Smart Board 30:


Ahead Of Their Time Regards
Steve

[bob]

long before the DGT board was released for sale ..piece recognition technology was utilized in dedicated computers

the Tasc computer chess systems and the Mephisto Bavaria board
the Bavaria was released in 1990 while the Tasc came out in 1993

interestingly..Tasc was found to be in copyright infringement and forced to discontinue its sale of the Smartboard(20 and 30) which ultimately forced the company to close its doors

Bavaria Board:


Tasc Smart Board 30:


Ahead Of Their Time Regards
Steve

That;s not a big deal. Ken Thompson had a piece recognition board and used it in Washington DC in 1978 at the ACM computer chess tournament that year. 1990 was a bit later.

[M ANSARI]

I remember buying a "smart board" a very long time back. When it finally arrived I had one square that would not work and that made it basically useless. I tried in vain to fix ... including getting the schematic diagrams for the board but it was no use. I remember I found it incredible that I could move pieces and watch them move on my computer screen. That way you could make the board play the most powerful engine possible.

I would love to get another one of these boards and would appreciate some information on where I could get one. I think with technological advances such as Wi Fi you could make it work from a distance and not need a monitor next to the board ... which would make it even more attractive. Is there one that has a small display to allow for some elementary functions such as "New Game" or maybe a location where a Pocket PC could be placed and thus become the interface. Maybe even a Pocket PC could be used instead of a computer to actually play the moves. A Pocket PC on a 624 Mhz processor probably still plays a mean game of chess.

[sje]

Well, if you can live with an auto sensory board that doesn't have piece recognition and that's only about 70% (linear) the size of a regular tournament board, then a Citrine could do all of what you ask. At least after you added a few small accessories like a wireless adaptor or one of those new small netbooks.

[sje]

Ken Thompson had a piece recognition board and used it in Washington DC in 1978 at the ACM computer chess tournament that year.

Did Ken ever publish the construction details of his piece recognition board? Perhaps his design or a slightly updated version would make for a nice do-it-yourself project.

[Steve B]

I would love to get another one of these boards and would appreciate some information on where I could get one.

you should watch Ebay
used Tasc Smart boards(either SB 20 or SB30) pop up with fair regularity
just a few weeks ago an SB20 was sold
do an Ebay search for the keyboards"Tasc and schachcomputer"
remember to increase the search field to worldwide

Up To The Tasc Regards
Steve

[bob]

Ken Thompson had a piece recognition board and used it in Washington DC in 1978 at the ACM computer chess tournament that year.

Did Ken ever publish the construction details of his piece recognition board? Perhaps his design or a slightly updated version would make for a nice do-it-yourself project.

Nor formally. What he used were coils in the bases of the pieces. The coils were "tuned" to a specific frequency, giving a white pawn frequency, a white knight frequency, etc... He had antennas running horizontally across the center of each rank, and vertically across the center of each file. He would inject a frequency (white pawn frequency for example) on the file antennas and then check for a
signal on the rank antennas. The coils would only resonate at the specific frequency they were tuned to, so white pawns would "couple" the horizontal and vertical antennas quite nicely. Scan each rank and after 8 cycles you know where every white pawn is. repeat for the other 11 frequencies and you are done.

RFID is much cleaner (DGT)...

[M ANSARI]

Piece recognition would be a piece of cake today. You could embed a microchip in each piece which would easily be identified within the boundaries of the chessboard square. The size of the chip is miniscule and can easily fit ... also it is relatively cheap. You could probably sell a kit of RFID microchips that would fit in any chess set ... although the board would need a little more work to identify the boundaries of the chess squares.

[sje]

I've been looking around for RFID parts. Here's the leading candidate so far for a do-it-yourself piece recognition board:

Shown at roughly actual size and costs about US$20 in quantity. One is needed for each square.

http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/produc ... ts_id=8709

[bob]

Piece recognition would be a piece of cake today. You could embed a microchip in each piece which would easily be identified within the boundaries of the chessboard square. The size of the chip is miniscule and can easily fit ... also it is relatively cheap. You could probably sell a kit of RFID microchips that would fit in any chess set ... although the board would need a little more work to identify the boundaries of the chess squares.

already done. DGT uses RFID...