Author: Steven Edwards
Date: 06:03:53 03/14/04
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On March 14, 2004 at 04:54:54, David Mitchell wrote: >On March 14, 2004 at 03:00:20, Joshua Shriver wrote: >>Anyone recommend a Electronic Chess set, that outputs data via a serial >>connection? That way games can be captured for storage, etc. >The top of the line electronic chess board with serial connection would probably >by the DGT. Not cheap, but quality units. They do not require the "push down on >the from square, push down on the to square" to keep track, using the built in >electronics in each piece to communicate where they are on the board. (reflected >resonant frequency, I believe). Note that the DGT is a serial com chess board, >and does not include a chess program. That's extra. I believe that all new DGT boards have a USB interface, not an RS-232 one. USB is more reliable (by far) but will require special driver software. This is undoubtably included for Windows platforms, but may be a problem for Linux or the BSDs. (Maybe if DGT would send me a free board and documentation, I could write a Mac OS X USB driver for them.) >CCC sponsor carries them, at: >http://www.icdchess.com/cgi-bin/store.cgi, as I'm sure other chess suppliers do >as well. For US$400 at ICD. Sounds a bit high, but if one uses it for many years, it's reasonable. DGT has the patent on RF resonance piece recognition, so there are no close alternatives. >Auto232 is designed to allow chess programs to play against each other on their >own, individual, computers. It's a wonderful utility, however, it's not quite >wonderful enough, IMO. Two-way communications with computers can be trickier >than you'd probably like to believe, and it's common to have any fault literally >leave one or both computers "hanging", because one is waiting to receive >specific data, or an ACK of receiving data, and so you sit, waiting for a time >out, your lawn to get green again, your thumbs to twiddle 1,000 times, anything. Certainly true; I've done custom RS-232 for years. I'd like to see an autosensory board with piece recognition that has a 100baseT connection combined with a built in web server. I have an inexpensive HP LaserJet with this and it greatly simplifies configuration and control. I have also thought about building a piece recognition board using RFID technology. (Each piece has a unique RFID tag.) The big problem with this is getting a good lock on the piece location. My idea is to use four RFID sensors, one at each corner of the board, and have them measure the response time lag for each piece. This would work if the board were large enough and the differential sampling frequency were high enough, all relative to the speed of light.
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