Author: demil

This week I mainly worked on making the full game work. I added a function for user to press the push button after moving for the AI, to allow our CV to compare two frames between the human player’s move. I added code for the human player to press the button at the start of the game to capture the initial board state. I also made some changes to how the LEDs light up and tested them. After human and computer players’ moves, we check for the game end state. When it is checkmate, all the LEDs light up in the color of the winner of the game, either red or blue. I also unified the paths for the captured and cropped images. There also was an issue with our new webcam setup and image orientation, which I fixed by rotating the images to the correct orientation before handing it over to the CV pipeline.

Next week I plan to do end to end testing and work on the final video and report.

This week the team continued to work on integration and started testing to get metrics for the final presentation. Yoorae updated the valid logic module to handle castling and fixed errors in integration regarding coordinates. Demi integrated LEDs, push button, webcam, and Stockfish AI to the game. Demi and Anoushka spent a significant amount of time fixing an issue with installing the neural network for cropping images on the RPi. Yoorae tested the valid move logic, and Anoushka tested CV correctness.

There are no serious risks, and we are on track with the schedule. Next week, we will work on the final presentation and do more testing.

This week I finished integrating the LEDs, push button, webcam, and Stockfish AI with the game controller. We now have the game working end to end from push button to webcam taking pictures of board to CV detection, lighting up user move, validating user move, and finally generating and lighting up AI’s next move.

I spent most of my time this week on integration issues for running the neural net submodule on RPi. After spending many hours in the lab trying different solutions with Anoushka, we were able to make it work by upgrading tensorflow. I also spent time setting up the webcam with the new webcam stand and taking images for CV testing.

Next week, I will be working on the final presentation and generating metrics for LEDs.

My main goal for this week was to have the board completely done. I successfully installed the LED matrix and connected the push button to the board. The WS2812B LED strips that I initially used were too weak, so I had to switch to a different LED strip WS2811. I chose WS2811 because they are stronger and do not require any soldering. I also had to redesign the board completely, laser cut the pieces, and assemble them. I wrote a script that takes coordinates as inputs and lights up the corresponding LEDs. This was shown during Wednesday’s demo.

I installed Stockfish AI on our RPi. I also wrote an example script to enter moves and get the next best move of the AI. Lastly, I have set up the webcam with the RPi. I downloaded the necessary libraries and wrote a shell script that captures an image with the specified resolution.

I am on schedule. I have tested all the modules I have been working on individually: LEDs, push button, webcam, Stockfish AI. Next week, I will focus on integrating them with the CV and valid move logic module.

My goal for this week was to have the LED matrix installed. Since the spacing between the LEDs do not match the length of our chessboard grid, I had to cut the strip into 64 LEDs and solder them. So far I have soldered 42 LEDs together. The soldering process is very time consuming and tedious as each LED have 3 connections.

I tested the chess game logic Yoorae wrote. I wrote simple test cases and found that there was an error with checking for vacant squares along the path. It should only check for the squares between the start and end position but was also checking whether the start square was vacant. This issue is now fixed.

Since the LED matrix is not completed, I am behind schedule. Completing the LEDs is my priority, and I am confident to have it done by Wednesday’s demo. For the rest of the week, I will begin working with Anoushka with CV / board integration and camera setup. I hope to get the board completely done next week, so I can focus on integration and testing for the rest of the semester.

 

This week, we continued to work on the three main areas of our project. Creating our custom chessboard, detecting moves with CV, and implementing the chess logic to check for valid moves. We are still working individually but am starting to think about integration on what information needs to be communicated between different modules.

There was one challenge regarding the sample chessboard for CV testing. Working with two chessboards did not work out as well as we expected. The sample chessboard was supposed to be taped together because gluing takes a long time. However, it was difficult to keep the pieces together with tape, and the gaps between pieces made edge detection hard. To mitigate this challenge, we decided to keep the main chessboard in the lab instead of having it in Demi’s apartment for the rest of the semester. Until this week, we mostly worked remotely in our apartments, but from now on we plan to work together in the lab with the main board.

There are no major changes made to our schedule.

This week, I mainly worked on making the case for the chessboard. I chose to use cardboard for the first prototype because cardboard is cheap and easy to cut and drill. I created dxf files using SolidWorks and went to Tech Spark to laser cut them. I also finished gluing the chessboard top, ordered a push button, and connected the LEDs to the RPi and tested controlling the LEDs using the NeoPixel library.

Below is an image of the grids and case glued together with the chessboard on top. The grids are used to separate the light from one LED to other LEDs to ensure that only the correct squares light up. The grids have small holes on the bottom to allow the LED strips to go through. I still have to make the top cover of the electronic case and install the LEDs and push button.

      

Next week’s goal is to have the full 8×8 LED matrix installed under the board. This will require cutting the LED strip into 64 LEDs and soldering them together. I will test the LEDs lighting up correctly given a coordinate. I will also install the push button once it arrives.