This is an idea for a collaborative dev project between various hackspace groups and I am looking for comments and suggestions, the idea being that we publish a basic set of CAD files for a chess set, and then the various groups such as the arduino group might have members who could come up with some sort of embedded microcontroller for adding touch and a UI, and possibly the mathspace group might be interested in implementing a chess playing algorithm... The 3d printing group could improve on the piece design....
The background is that I've been recently learning freecad and one of the projects was to design and produce a 3d printed chess set. Once I'd done that, the obvious thing was to make a chess board on the laser cutter, and that came out ok.
But it reminded me of the electronic chess games that I played as a kid. It gave me the idea of a sort of cross discipline collaboration project amongst the various groups at the hackspace.
But it suggests numerous incremental improvements, most of which are fairly self contained, or in a linear path of development.
- add magnets to base of pieces
- sensors to detect pieces and moves
- lcd to show game status
- microcontroller with chess rules logic
- some rudimentary "computer opponent"