Author: vtm500

Team Status Report for 10/1

This week, we worked on validating our sensing architecture as well as the chess board PCB schematics and layout. We also worked on incorporating Stockfish’s move generation into our legality checker.

The biggest risks that our project faces are part shipping time and part stock. We are managing these issues by doing schematics and picking parts early as well as by monitoring stock of any components that are low. We are also looking at alternative vendors that may have more stock. One contingency plan is that we can have a list of drop in replacements for certain PCB components. Another risk is that something is done incorrectly on the circuit boards. This risk is being managed by having all group members look over the design before ordering. We likely will have enough money left over to order a second revision if absolutely necessary, but the circuit boards themselves should have room to rework and modify the design.

One change we wanted to make to our requirements is going from simply being able to detect piece color to detecting each piece type using the hall effect sensors. This was initially considered as a change because the initial color detection is not enough to cover all scenarios of pawn promotion. Before we finalize this change, we will do more investigation into magnet choices to ensure this is possible. The cost of this is that we will spend a little more money buying components that may not be on the final product. This cost will be mitigated by saving extra money on PCB components where possible.

We are largely still on track with our original schedule.

Vikram’s Status Report for 10/1

This week, I first designed and milled out a test PCB for our hall effect sensors. While waiting for the sensors to arrive, I began working on the schematics and layout for the actual chess board PCB. Schematics are nearly done, and layout has been started. While designing the chess board PCB, I began looking at costs. To lower costs, we will create the board from 8 duplicates of the same PCB that is large enough for one column or row of the chess board.

Once the sensors and test magnets arrived, I soldered the sensors to the test PCB and worked with Patrick to verify that our magnet choices will work for this design. We found that the diameter of the magnet mattered more than expected in comparison to the strength of the magnet. The results mean that our plan for sensing the color of the pieces will work well, but sensing piece type in addition to color may not work with our initial magnet choices. However, physically larger magnets (not necessarily stronger) are available.

Given this progress, I am back on schedule. However, I do have a large chunk of work set for the next week, so I will have to plan well in order to not start falling behind.

For the next week, I plan to have the chess board PCB and the BOM ready to order.

Vikram’s Status Report for 9/24

We spent the first part of the week working on the proposal presentation which was given on Monday. After this, I started finalizing our hall effect sensor options. At this point, I plan to order two ratiometric sensors to test. One is a unipolar sensor that would be able to detect different strengths of magnets. This would be useful for our original idea to put different magnets in differently colored chess pieces. The second sensor is a bipolar sensor. This sensor allow us to use the same magnet, but flip it inside the chess piece to distinguish between piece color. This strategy was suggested by Professor Mukherjee during our presentation, and we are going add this to our initial test setup. As part of the sensor choice, I collaborated with Patrick since he had found a variety of magnets of different strengths and sizes.

I also started designing a 2 square test PCB to validate our plan for sensing pieces and figure out any additional considerations we may need to deal with.

My progress is slightly behind schedule since I would have liked to have had the magnets and sensors ordered at the end of this past week. However, this will be mitigated by parallelizing work on the final circuit board with testing of the sensors. Design on the final board that is not directly involved with the sensors can still be done. In addition more work on the board mechanical side can be done.

For the next week, I hope to have started testing the sensors and magnets we will purchase. In addition, I will have started schematics for the main chess board PCB.