Chess players who would like to build their very own automatic robotic chess board are sure to enjoy a new project published by YouTuber Greg06. Featured on the official Arduino Blog the chessboard allows you to play against remote players with the robotic two-axis gantry system hidden underneath the chessboard moving pieces magically for you. Check out the demonstration video below to learn more about the build.
Maker Greg06 has kindly published details of the project to the Instructables website providing details on all the pieces you will need to be able to build your very own. Together with full instructions on how to assemble everything from the pulleys to programming the Arduino Nano development board.
Robotic chess board
“At the base of the gameboard is a two-axis gantry system, which is responsible for moving the chess pieces positioned above via an electromagnet. And rather than placing one stepper motor on each axis, the gantry takes advantage of the CoreXY concept which can move the magnet in all directions with a complex arrangement of pulleys, belts, and two stationary stepper motors. Controlling this is a single Arduino Nano connected to a pair of A4988 drivers, a MOSFET for driving the magnet, and two limit switches for homing.”
“The game is able to determine which piece was moved and to which specific grid square via an 8×8 matrix of reed switches that close a circuit whenever there is a magnet nearby. To save on GPIO pins, four multiplexers were added in order to take the 64 incoming values from the switches and convert it into a single 6-bit value. Finally, a 16×2 character LCD was included for providing instructions/menus to the player(s).”
Source: Arduino automatic robotic chess board
