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DIY-Machines / SmartChess

Smart Chessboard project for online human and local computer play.
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Crashing on move entry #3

Open hermy65 opened 3 years ago

hermy65 commented 3 years ago

We built one of the chessboards for my son to play and we cant even get through a full game without it crashing. Sometimes the crash just happens randomly and the board does the startup green cell by cell animation mid-game when the screen says thinking, other times, and most often its when he pushes the hint button. Sometimes when using the hint button the coordinates change to multicolors and then the board crashes, other times it just hangs there and does nothing. Below are 2 videos, one showing using the hint, then the coordinates going multi colored then crashing and one showing the hint button just causing the board to hang and never do anything.

Video 1 - multi colored coordinates and a crash Video 2 - hint button leading to board freezing, bad coordinates in the screen and nothing happening on the board itself

Running on all of the hardware in your build guide except we are using a pi 3 b instead of the a

cheepiao commented 3 years ago

I just completed this Smart Chess today. I only try out the first game, it had been running fine so far. Thanks.

cheepiao commented 3 years ago

We built one of the chessboards for my son to play and we cant even get through a full game without it crashing. Sometimes the crash just happens randomly and the board does the startup green cell by cell animation mid-game when the screen says thinking, other times, and most often its when he pushes the hint button. Sometimes when using the hint button the coordinates change to multicolors and then the board crashes, other times it just hangs there and does nothing. Below are 2 videos, one showing using the hint, then the coordinates going multi colored then crashing and one showing the hint button just causing the board to hang and never do anything.

Video 1 - multi colored coordinates and a crash Video 2 - hint button leading to board freezing, bad coordinates in the screen and nothing happening on the board itself

Running on all of the hardware in your build guide except we are using a pi 3 b instead of the a

I just wondering if the power supply plays a part? May I know what is the power supply rating you are using? The NeoPixel LED should takes up a bit of power from the power supply and it leave very little for the Raspberry Pi and others if the power supply is under powered. Thus, unstable power supply may cause strange issue. Well, just a thought, not sure if this could be the real cause. Hope you could find the root cause so that your son could enjoy the game soon. Cheers! :)

DIY-Machines commented 3 years ago

Insufficient power (as @cheepiao suggests) or perhaps a shorting wire could be likely candidates. What is the power supply you are using at the moment?

hermy65 commented 3 years ago

@DIY-Machines

Using a CanaKit Raspberry Pi 3+ power supply right now. Is there one you would recommend instead?

This one to be exact - https://www.amazon.com/CanaKit-Raspberry-Supply-Adapter-Listed/dp/B00MARDJZ4/ref=sr_1_3?crid=33UO4M985DU2M&dchild=1&keywords=micro+usb+power+supply&qid=1624291982&sprefix=microusb+power%2Caps%2C210&sr=8-3

DIY-Machines commented 3 years ago

That should be plenty of power available.

I know it's a little awkward, but can you play it with the control panel (the one with th buttons and the one with the screen) unscrewed so that you can have internal electronics spaced out as much as possible whilst you play to also see if it's a wire shorting a circuit and causing a reset.

There have been many of these built and this is the first occurrence of the issue so we are trying to figure out how yours may differ from the build video.

If the problem continues with the parts having no ability to short themselves, you could check for power issues dialling down the brightness of the playing surface LEDs. Can you re-upload the code to your Arduino Nano but change line 74 of 'Chess_Simp.ino'

chessboardLEDS.setBrightness(255);

Change the value of he brightness from 255 down to something like 100. Does the issue still present itself after the?

cheepiao commented 3 years ago

Hi Lewis, glad that you share the 'Chess_Simp.ino' code to lower down the brightness. I was about to ask how to do that. Appreciated and thank you.

cheepiao commented 3 years ago

@DIY-Machines

Using a CanaKit Raspberry Pi 3+ power supply right now. Is there one you would recommend instead?

This one to be exact - https://www.amazon.com/CanaKit-Raspberry-Supply-Adapter-Listed/dp/B00MARDJZ4/ref=sr_1_3?crid=33UO4M985DU2M&dchild=1&keywords=micro+usb+power+supply&qid=1624291982&sprefix=microusb+power%2Caps%2C210&sr=8-3

Ok.... however, noticed rating by some of the users in Amazon stated that the power supply does seem not so promising in keeping stable voltage upon higher load. Anyway, as what @DIY-Machines suggested, I had tried to reduce the brightness for all LEDs (both chess board and panel) from 255 to 20 and the power consumption really reduce significantly. I did not do any electrical measurement but I just touch the power adapter and it feel much cooler. Hope this helps. Have fun. Cheers!

hermy65 commented 3 years ago

@DIY-Machines he played 2games with all of the electronics pulled out, he said he got to about 2 moves left in the game and it started the green cell thing each time. We made the brightness change and the same thing happened.

hermy65 commented 3 years ago

@cheepiao have you found any other power supply options worth looking at?

cheepiao commented 3 years ago

@hermy65, actually I ordered a PWR+ power supply (supported up till 3.5A) from Amazon before I tuned down the brightness of the LEDs. But, with the brightness of LED lowered, it may not be necessary to get a more powerful PS anymore. Anyway, the power supply is on it way and will try it out once it arrive. Have a wonderful weekend.

cheepiao commented 3 years ago

@DIY-Machines, Good day, I would like to highlight something about the experience while playing so far... I never get to complete a game and when I get to "Checkmate" the computer, it always stay at the "thinking" state and never show any "end game animation" that I have won. Also, it seems I only can activate the "shutdown" sequence (by holding the Hint and H8) at the end of the game but not during game play. Anyway, I will try again when my new power supply arrive and see how it goes... Thank you.

DIY-Machines commented 3 years ago

@cheepiao I believe you may have found a bug in the code. Do you mind creating a new 'issue' on Github for Checkmate handling and repeating your information. I'm rebuilding my chessboards so I can re-run and check the code for the issues you are finding. The end game ones were particular hard to troubleshoot as I know it was working when I added the end game handling but it seems something else has 'broken' that bit of code and I didn't always have the time to play lot's of games whilst refining the software - particular right to the end. :/

cheepiao commented 3 years ago

@DIY-Machines I had created a new issue entitled "Checkmate handling and shutdown ". Really appreciated it. Thank you.

DIY-Machines commented 3 years ago

Just an update: I'll have finished putting my chessboard back together today. I have decided to first figure out a way to log what's happening so that when the problem surfaces itself you can send a log for me and others to look at to help accelerate troubleshooting. Once this logging is added to the software I'll provide a link to the revised code which will need applying to your board(s).

DIY-Machines commented 3 years ago

@hermy65 I've got to join the family on a holiday this week and will be scolded if they find me working on this. :) For the time being can I ask if you mind trying to capture one or two examples of your board crashing out of a game? If you don't mind, please do the following:

You should then be able to play a game whilst monitoring the output from the Raspberry Pis code in the terminal. When the game crashes please can you copy the output from the terminal and post it here along with a description of your last few physical interactions with board?

hermy65 commented 3 years ago

Doing the same here too ;)

Will give it a shot when we get back home

hermy65 commented 3 years ago

@DIY-Machines tried it but i dont think its working as intended. I started the game manually like stated, did a control+c, started it again then pressed the reset button on the arduino. Once pushing the reset button on the arduino it went back to the green square loading animation and nothing else ever happened. This is what putty looked like:

`pi@raspberrypi:~ $ cd SmartChess/RaspberryPiCode/ pi@raspberrypi:~/SmartChess/RaspberryPiCode $ python2 StartChessGame.py

Sent to board: heyArduinoChooseMode Waiting for mode of play to be decided on the Arduino

Waiting for command from the Board ^CTraceback (most recent call last): File "StartChessGame.py", line 297, in gameplayMode = getboard()[1:].lower() File "StartChessGame.py", line 88, in getboard if ser.in_waiting > 0: File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/serial/serialposix.py", line 468, in in_waiting return struct.unpack('I', s)[0] KeyboardInterrupt pi@raspberrypi:~/SmartChess/RaspberryPiCode $ python2 StartChessGame.py

Sent to board: heyArduinoChooseMode Waiting for mode of play to be decided on the Arduino

Waiting for command from the Board Traceback (most recent call last): File "StartChessGame.py", line 297, in gameplayMode = getboard()[1:].lower() File "StartChessGame.py", line 89, in getboard btxt = ser.readline().decode('utf-8').rstrip().lower() File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/serial/serialposix.py", line 501, in read 'device reports readiness to read but returned no data ' serial.serialutil.SerialException: device reports readiness to read but returned no data (device disconnected or multiple access on port?) pi@raspberrypi:~/SmartChess/RaspberryPiCode $ `

DIY-Machines commented 3 years ago

@hermy65 What appears to be happening is whilst the Pi is trying to communicate via the serial connection with the Arduino something is preventing a stable serial connection from being established/maintained. This is proving tricky to troubleshoot - sorry.

Intermittent bugs are the worst to identify and solve. Let's see if we can be 100% sure of the software - is their any chance you're in the UK? Then I can post you a loaner SD card which I know works on my chessboards.

Next will be bypassing the LLC and connecting the Raspberry Pi and Arduino with a USB cable to see if that makes the connection more stable. (This is not like this in the original design because of space constraints in the enclosure).

hermy65 commented 3 years ago

@DIY-Machines Unfortunately im not in the UK. If you have a sd card you want to take an image of and upload it somewhere i can try that.

As for connecting the pi to the arduino, anything i need to change code wise to make that work?

DIY-Machines commented 3 years ago

I think (from memory) we just need to update the port which the Arduino is connected on. See line #15 of StartChessGame.py. You may need to plug and unplug the USB whilst issuing lsusb -t

Uploading an image was my preferred method when creating the instructional video but the file was going to be several GB in size. I'll send you a private message with a link to download a copy of my image shortly when it has finished uploading. (It will still have my private adafruit.io credentials in it so I would appreciate it if you changed them if you keep using this image - thanks.)

DIY-Machines commented 3 years ago

@hermy65 Sent image file to you via Patreon.

DIY-Machines commented 3 years ago

@hermy65 I would test the image first as using the USB cable will involve physically disconnecting the serial wires from the Pi and Nano.

hermy65 commented 3 years ago

@DIY-Machines Maybe i did this wrong but i updated line 15 to reflect ttyUSB0 vs ttyAMA0 and on the first couple of attempts to get things working it would do the green loading animation, go about half way through then restart it all over again and never connect.

secondly, i tried your image and it never connects just slowly goes through the green loading animation and never starts up

DIY-Machines commented 3 years ago

OK thanks for trying this. Just to clarify:

You tried the new image I sent on your own chessboard without any hardware modifications which is when it does the green loading and never starts up?

Then you tried to change the serial connection used by updating line 15, disconnecting the LLC at all points (and probably you should also disconnect the 5v power wire on the Nano as it will dry power from the Pi's USB) and then used a USB cable instead between the Pi and Nano. This then caused it to repeatedly loop the green loading screen animation?

Thanks

hermy65 commented 3 years ago

@DIY-Machines Correct on the image, no modifications and it failed to start up.

As for the other statement, i did NOT disconnect the LLC. It appears that i incorrectly assumed i just needed to update line 15 and then test it. I can disconnect it as you asked above and see what happens

hermy65 commented 3 years ago

@DIY-Machines removed the LLC and the 5v wire, updated line 15 then plugged in USB and it started up fine. My son got maybe 8-9 moves into a game before things went sideways though. He attempted to move some piece from c2->c3 and the screen showed c0->c3 THINKING and then never progressed from there.

He played a second game after that one though and managed to actually finish it so thats a first.

DIY-Machines commented 3 years ago

Hi @hermy65 . Sorry it has taken sometime for me to get another look at this. Someone else solved and issue by ensuring they had the python-serial library installed. Please can you try this as see if it helps?

sudo apt install python-serial

As you are making some moves this might not be your exact problem but it will be worth ago. The other people who have done this have fully functioning boards again.

hermy65 commented 3 years ago

@DIY-Machines it appears that everything is working now going the USB route. Would you suggest we hook the LLC back up and then install the serial library and go that route or since its working now just leave it as is?

DIY-Machines commented 3 years ago

If it is working for you with USB then I would suggest you keep enjoying your board as it is. If you're happy we can mark this as closed but it will still be here for other peoples reference.