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Certabo wish list

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Two more suggestions...

1. Consider opening a GITHub acount and make your software project completely open. This will undoubtedly attract extra developers which could make this eboard explode in popularity.

2. Far future... Offer integrated computer with the board.

Just some ideas...

Pietro has reacted to this post.
Pietro
Quote from ibabarovic on December 16, 2018, 12:13 pm

Hello Certabo!

I registered as proposed by a Certabo employee over email. Here are some of my suggestions.

Main use for the board would be to play with engines with human like AI, solving  chess problems and end game study. Of course it would be enormous fun to play online with already existing accounts on chess.com, lichess and such...

Suggestions.

1. Make "play from position" extremely simple. Just put pieces on board and start playing by moving an already placed piece. Computer should respond right away. If one wants computer to move first he could do that for example by placing extra Queen somewhere on the board. My goal here is to eliminate interaction with LCD/GUI as much as possible.

2. Easy engine selection. Putting for example an  extra Queen or dedicated piece on a certain square would select an engine.

Look here for example: http://docs.picochess.org/en/latest/usage.html#choosing-the-engine

3. Easy engine level selection. Put dedicated piece on a certain square.

If you read carefully you will see that most of those wishes are implemented with picochess on DGT boards.

http://docs.picochess.org/en/latest/usage.html#

4. Ability to simply add more engines. Check this link out. More that 60 engines added to pichocess. https://groups.google.com/forum/?nomobile=true#!topic/picochess/KI7HTXQZszw

5. Opening book and endgame tables integration! This is high on the list. Easy opening type selection for training.

http://docs.picochess.org/en/latest/usage.html#choosing-opening-books

Make Certabo eboard main interaction interface for a player. Only use LCD/GUI/... for stuff that can't be implemented over the board. Like managind PGNs,connecting to servers,...

How is your support for hardware chess clocks?

Hello Ivo

Thank you for registering and submitting your view.

But let me give first an overview on philosophy behind. Our main idea was anyhow to have both possibility to use as eboard or actually chess computer which is more close to what your desiderata we think. As main idea to use the board as chess computer  we think that rather than integrate the computational part in the board it makes more sense and is quite easier to use those devices like "cable extension ", this because for couple of reasons. The first is that those computational hardware ages very quickly so you may find in few months they are out of date so you are stuck with outdated board in the chessboard. Second reason is what computational hw you use? You can go for 10 euro board of PI Zero to 40 euro of Pi3 something less for orange Pi or you can use odroid or banana Pi or whatever you like. So we left to the user option to use the hw they like and at basically raw cost as they can buy directly.

To be honest we did consider using picochess as we actually started development from PI devices rather than from PC else if we ended up in doing differently making a Gui for PI which by the way to use you do not need any local lcd or display. This because having a gui embedded in the software make everything easy irrespective you are using or not it, give more flexibility and give a bit more of control as gesture on boards will anyhow limit a bit as when you want to export pgn etc. and for some people can be not intuitive. For that we made an app which connect to Raspberry devices and show remote the GUI on your phone (irrespective you have an lcd or dsplay on PI) so you select everything and start the game then leds will just guide you through the game so can forget interface. In other words you just need to connect the tiny Pi zero W or Pi3 to the board (without any lcd or display just in their case) and, apart from providing computational power,  they will behave as access point to your board remoting all the functions of selection and starting the game on your android phone (there are also similar app for Ios already done from third parties which allows to do that). Than we have leds and when you start the game you do not even need to look at nothing but the board and no need for announcement no need for an even simple display to see engine move unless at the end of the game you want to save or doing something different.

Actually most of the features you are asking are integrated already in the PC version (apart from 5 we are working on) and we are now bringing those to PI version too. Said also that we would be glad  to help integration of Certabo with picochess  should be quite straight forward, there is just need to integrate the initial setup feature of pieces and than you will have a file with name of pieces and their position in real time which can be passed over to picochess as its done now do not need to change anything in current logic of pico chess and you could use same gestures eventually.

We will send a mail to picochess guys for them should be really simple and fast for them if they are available if you already have any contact with them just pm me so will follow up with technical details. Alternatively we can have a look directly as soon as possible it's noted in the wish list activity 🙂

All the best

Pietro

 

Pietro and Ingo3d have reacted to this post.
PietroIngo3d
Quote from ibabarovic on December 16, 2018, 12:24 pm

Two more suggestions...

1. Consider opening a GITHub acount and make your software project completely open. This will undoubtedly attract extra developers which could make this eboard explode in popularity.

2. Far future... Offer integrated computer with the board.

Just some ideas...

Hello Ivo

Done! You are right we received many requests of source from users who are working and we were actually planning to do rather then sending source codes upon request you can find here at  https://github.com/CERTABO easier for everybody to contribute as you can create branches and add new features to the board using the same repository.

All the best

Pietro

Hello Everybody

Hope you all had good Christmas break.

We advice we have just released version 2.7 of the software, and following some desiderata and your precious advices (for which we thank again much)  we implemented the Random Fisher playing option. Now you can just start game with pieces in any Chess960 combination, select " Use board position" option and flag the Chess960 option this will switch the Random Fischer castling rules on and will switch the Chess960 option on the UCI engine too automatically. When you castle to avoid the ambiguous move just take both rook and king at same time an place in castled position (but you can move the king also before the rook if it has to move more than one square for castling otherwise it can be taken as king move only).

We also added sound warning when engine move is done (you can use any .wav file you want just replace the file in sound directory with your preferred one and rename move.wav).

We also fixed the wrong inversion player color turn when playing with board setup. Also improved the Stalemate recognition in all game modalities, and in addition also banners for five fold repetition, insufficient material etc which will pop up once such condition is met.

Great adding was also that you can now broadcast your game very easily you can launch the software in broadcast modality and as owner of Certabo board you can get free account on our servers so you can create your tournaments, game rounds. etc. We will follow up with some instructions on how to setup and launch a broadcast game, its very easy to go live with your games.

All the best

Pietro

 

That great to hear Pietro. Thanks for your work.

Hello and happy new year!

Always our pleasure to keep updating.

By the way we also have just released the Mac version for apple lovers too. This is same 2.7 release.

Pietro

Hi Pietro

Maybe now you have added 'Sound' to the engine move, would it be possible to add another 'Sound' when you make an illegal move?

Regards

Bryan

Quote from bryan.whitby on January 25, 2019, 3:58 pm

Hi Pietro

Maybe now you have added 'Sound' to the engine move, would it be possible to add another 'Sound' when you make an illegal move?

Regards

Bryan

Or even a voice saying "check". The bell sound is perfect for making a move btw. Well done.

Quote from camfisher_nz on February 8, 2019, 10:32 am
Quote from bryan.whitby on January 25, 2019, 3:58 pm

Hi Pietro

Maybe now you have added 'Sound' to the engine move, would it be possible to add another 'Sound' when you make an illegal move?

Regards

Bryan

Or even a voice saying "check". The bell sound is perfect for making a move btw. Well done.

Hi Bryan

Sorry missed this message, thanks for suggestion noted and added in to do list too it makes sense. Well we can do two different .wav and then you can just customise

Pietro

bryan.whitby has reacted to this post.
bryan.whitby

Hello Pietro,

More insight into the engine would be good, what is its current look ahead and position score.

An infinite level for chess problems & position analysis too.

Danny.

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