Team AC: Smart Chess board

 

Personal Progress

I integrated the smart clock into the game and verified that multiplayer and singleplayer works. At this point, we have a MVP of a board with software able to drive the game logic

Schedule and Deliverable

Were on schedule and should be able to demo our board tomorrow

This week, I have worked on making the physical board.  I fixed an issue with the power supply for the LEDs and replaced 2 rows of LEDs that were fried due to the initially wrong power supply.  I also designed and laser cut the chessboard, and have been working on combining the sensor array, LEDs, and board into one single hardware component.

Risks

We’re currently assembling the board by taping the sensors to the acrylic board. We had to take out the wires so hopefully rewiring everything won’t result in anything that affects the sensors. We had some issues powering the LED’s so we were unable to test them thoroughly. The LED’s are currently under the power limit but we are trying to be as careful as possible. We also haven’t tested everything together so there may be issues with full integration, but we have tested everything in isolation carefully so we don’t expect any major problems.

Changes to System

None.

Changes to Schedule

None.

Personal Progress

I was able to get the smart timer working. It runs a separate thread that can be triggered and stopped by the main chess program. I am looking at how to integrate it in the chess logic. I have also started looking at networked play. I have a plan on how to implement it, but we are limited on time so I’m not sure how far we’ll get.

Schedule

I am on schedule to finish everything on time for the demo, except for networked play.

Deliverable

I’m working on whatever I can so that we can be ready for the Monday demo. I think we will have a single board ready for gameplay on demo.

We made significant strides this past week in both the physical product and integration.  Austin finished assembling the physical sensor array with muxes, Chris finished getting the signal handling to a working state, and David was able to integrate the software game with the hardware inputs and play a simplified game to checkmate.  Remaining goals for this week are for Austin to get the physical enclosure put together (so it’s possible to actually put a piece on the board instead of just balancing it on top of an individual sensor), for Chris to get the smart clock integrated, for David to finish ironing out wrinkles in the integration of the game software with the board, and for Chris and David to try and see if they can get the networked component operational.

We got the basic board working with my code, and I was able to play a minimal singleplayer game between stockfish and I.

I’m roughly up-to-date with my schedule. Most of the core is integrated and in place for a working singleplayer game, modulo some TODOs: and special cases that I may have overlooked. The GUI is pretty barebones and could have some debug output moved to it instead the console.

The biggest deliverable this week are the final presentations, and poster. Other than that I hope to get to the final TODOs I left in my code like en passante capture and castling.

This week, I finished assembling the sensor array, with the muxing fully enabled.  I also soldered the rgb led strips into the appropriate configuration, and made a circuit to account for the voltage difference between the power source and the voltage demand of the LEDs.  I am now working on making the physical board surface that will cover the lights, and expect to finish that in this upcoming week.  In addition, I have started and will continue to work on the slides for the final presentation this upcoming week.

Personal Progress

Austin and I were able to finish the sensor circuitry and test it. We were able to get it working for the demo. We are currently trying to help finish the gui software by learning python chess.

Schedule

We are behind schedule but I think if we work hard all week, we should have a finished board and software before the demo.

Deliverable

The main focus is definitely the software. We are trying to get it to a state where we can link the sensor input to the gui for basic gameplay.

Personal Progress

Integration is coming along with the sensor code and the QT framework. I spent most of Friday running through a few different implementations for all test code and real sensor code. I’ve been able to simplify the design quite a bit and integrate Chris’s test code. This is proving to be an exercise is dusting off my python and software engineering skills, which is useful.

Schedule

We are on track to be ready for our demo barring any surprises.

Deliverable

Hopefully we will have have our code fully interacting with the sensors and driving the LED’s by Monday.