Smart Chess

[jason-zavala]

We are looking to make a smart chess board. An incredible feat of engineering in modern times. We are hoping to power this through a Rasberry Pi and some sort of array of sensors underneath the board. Team members: Ye Zhou, Jason Zavala,

Website https://jason-zavala.github.io/smartchess/

Current Team Members

• Jason Zavala: Software Expert
• Ye Zhou: Hardware Master

Joining Team Chess

We are looking for:

• More Hardware pros!
• Software professionals!

Contact Jason Zavala: jason.zavala@utah.edu

[bbleaptrot]

Comment from Group 5 (Luke, John, McKay, Benjamin): --Practical Use This project will increase the general understanding and skill level of chess enthusiasts as they learn to play with the help of an AI. --Challenges Implementing a brand new chess AI would be a significant challenge. --Marketplace Chess enthusiasts are the biggest potential market. Schools and retirement homes are other potential markets. --Purchase? Yes! We are chess enthusiasts looking to better our game. :) --Improvements? -Have a physical system to move opponents chess pieces instead of telling person where to place them. -Raspberry Pi and Arduino can be costly once prototyping is finished. A custom embedded system may be cheaper for the chess board -If this is already connected to a computer, could friends play with each other online?

[TristanStotesbery]

Group 3 (Tristan Stotesbery, Spencer Durrant, Ben Van hoose): The practical uses of this product are for entertainment, as well as competitive chess competitions. It seems like there will need to be a lot of sensors involved, how will you keep cost down with all those sensors? Will you implement different difficulty levels for the AI? Anyone who plays chess could enjoy this product. Our team would consider buying this if the cost could be kept down. Our group would try to work on making the project as cheap as possible.

[JstaNate]

Comment from Group HealthyBois (Nathan Hummel, Michael Linnebach, Brady Smith):

What is the practical use?
-  To help beginners learn chess, to teach people who already know how to play chess the best moves for certain 
   circumstances.
What are the challenges we think of to implement this project?
-  Calculating the best next move, keeping track of where all the pieces are, getting magnets to work correctly without 
    interfering with one another.
-  Getting more than 65 happy customers.
What is the marketplace for this project?
-  Anybody interested in learning chess or becoming better at it.
Will we buy it?
-  I would probably buy it.
What to improve from an outsider's perspective?
-  Maybe think of another way to attach all the hardware, as a lot of things can go wrong with hand-soldering everything.
-  Any move that requires moving over another piece is impossible with magnets.  an example of this would be Knights 
   movements.
-  Deal with fraud claims on website.

[alexCharters]

Comment from Group 6 Emmanuel Lotubai, Brandon Chen, Alex Charters:

What is the practical use? To learn and improve chess skills.

What are the challenges we think of to implement this project?

• Designing magnet movement system.
• Making a decent chess AI.
• Board state capturing.

What is the marketplace for this project?

• Chess players or interested chess players.

Will we buy it? Yeah. Could be good for school use as well.

What to improve from an outsider's perspective? Sources for the data on the website.

[ScotthewUT]

- What is the practical use of this project? Entertainment and improving ability at chess. - What are the challenges to implement this project? Programming a good AI chess player is very involved. Hopefully, you can build on something that's already been developed. - What is the marketplace for this project? Anyone interested in chess would enjoy this. - Will we buy it? If it was made affordable, I'd absolutely like a smart chess board. - What to improve the project from an outsider's perspective: Tunable skill level would be a great feature.

Sounds like a lot of fun. Good luck! -VectorU, Scott & Aaron

[Interestle]

Comment from Group 9 (Colton Watson, Seth Jackson, Phelan Hobbs):

What is the practical use? Many people would like to play chess at a higher level.

What are the challenges we think of to implement this project? Distinguishing this from other available products. There already are automated chess boards, and numerous online chess programs.

What is the marketplace for this project? Chess grandmasters, chess club members, chess enthusiasts.

Will we buy it? Yeah, if it can be competitive.

What to improve from an outsider's perspective? Make it competitive to already available products.

[ColinPollard]

What is the practical use? This product could aid in improving the skills of any player, in a more tactile manner than possible with online training.

What are the challenges to implement the project? Creating a polished, yet inexpensive product that people will want to buy will be difficult. Need to make it cool enough that a premium will be payed over chess.com for instance.

What is the marketplace? Players that want to improve their skill and want a physical board.

Will we buy it? If the final product is well polished, inexpensive, and has innovative game modes, absolutely.

What to improve? Include an API for developers to create their own game modes with the board. Very good integration with online services.

[MrYo531]

What is the practical use? Play chess against an AI but on a real board, so it feels more real. What are the challenges we think of to implement this project? Routing the LEDs to every square on the board. Controlling them, likely through a microcontroller. And maybe integrating the AI and software to flash the lights, tell the user to move those pieces. What is the marketplace for this project? Anyone who plays or enjoys chess. Will we buy it? Chess is pretty cool, I'd buy it. What to improve from an outsider's perspective? Everything seems pretty expensive. Any way to make this cheaper?

[bcwadsworth]

Comment from Group 1 (Benjamin Wadsworth, Dalton Clift, Sam Hirsch):

What is the practical use? This product seems to provide a physical way to play chess against an AI. As noted, it seems to offer strong possibilities of "smart features" such as allowing people to play against remote players, offer additional game modes, allow and perform analytics on playstyles, learn from and block newer player strategies, etc.

What are the challenges we think of to implement this project? Sensing the pieces seems to be the biggest hardware challenge as designed currently, properly implementing the AI or other "smart" features is probably the biggest software challenge.

What is the marketplace for this project? Chess enthusiasts or those who want to learn chess, or have use for any "smart" features put into the device would be the marketplace.

Will we buy it? There are already commercially available alternatives to this product that have greater features than what is promised here (such as https://squareoffnow.com/). Without features that make it stand out in the category, or a miniscule price point, we would find it hard to justify purchasing this product.

What to improve from an outsider's perspective? With a little bit of extra engineering, performing piece control (the board moves the pieces) would go a long way to achieving what might be desired from a smart chessboard. Listing and perfecting good "Extra features" such as analytics or an adaptive AI could also help this product shine for its apparent target demographic.

[YeZhou0226]

1. Things they got wrong: We are not trying to generate our own chess AI system, and we just want to use an open source chess AI from other website.

2. Things they got right: The price of hardware parts is the most important part we need to concern. To reduce the price of our project we need to consider to get full use of each hardware part.

3. Change mind: Our board can be affordable comparing to other solutions. We just start with a traditional chess board with several hardware components so the price will not be so high. However, people can play chess with AI with such a low price, which should be attractive.

[Interestle]

Comment from Group 9 (Colton Watson, Seth Jackson, Phelan Hobbs):

Is the prototype related to the project?

Yes, it would be easier to implement a chess API than build a chess machine from the ground up.

Is the prototype convincing for you to invest?

Yeah, if the API works and can make a reasonable chess player.

[Durrantula]

Group 3's response (going off excel, can't find prototype on your website) Is the prototype related? It's related in research aspects.

Is the prototype convincing to invest in? Not if it's only research, maybe if some extra proof of concept is demonstrated. Maybe explain what you will do in software other than use just open-source code

[BradySmith1019]

HealthyBois comment:

Is the prototype related to the project? It is related, but seems a little simple for a prototype.

Is the prototype convincing to invest in? The software aspect alone doesn't necessarily warrant investment. Maybe include some hardware progress and we would.

[alexCharters]

Is the prototype related to the project?

• Yes. However, it would be good to see some proof of concept for the physical board.

Is the prototype convincing for us to invest?

• No. We would need to see progress either in the LED matrix board or moving chess pieces before we invest.

[Sam3077]

Group 1 (Sam Hirsch, Dalton Clift, and Benjamin Wadsworth)

Is the prototype related to the project? Yes, this does seem to be closely related to the project goals. However, the project still seems fairly limited.

Will we invest? Probably not because this doesn't add many new features to preexisting technologies.

[altonbill]

Is the prototype related to the project?

It's while simple it is related and should give you a good start

Is the prototype convincing for you to invest? No, would need to see progress a little further towards the final product

[bbleaptrot]

Comments from Team 5 (Luke, Benjamin, John, Mckay): -Is this prototype related to the project?

Yes! This prototype solves the software aspect of this project.

-Is the prototype convincing us to buy?

No. The appealing aspect of this project is having the physical board light up with the next potential moves.

[josmer-code-myster]

Team 8 (Salwa, Joshua, Todd, Mohammed):

-Is this prototype related to the project? Maybe I'm missing something. Everyone else's comments seem to reference a prototype, but I'm not seeing a prototype mentioned on the website or this page.

-Is the prototype convincing us to buy? Without reading a description of the prototype, I cannot speak to whether it is convincing.

[ScotthewUT]

VectorU comment:

Is the prototype related to the project? Yes, a software demonstration would show potential for the project. Couldn't find info about the prototype on the website. Perhaps get some details posted there too?

Is the prototype convincing for us to invest? If the software prototype was working well enough to show promise, yes.