Chessconnect: a free chrome extension for electronic chessboards

@qnuti: With version 3.5 I changed the i18n code to comply with what Google says it should be done (i.e. using chrome.i18n). Consequently the language and locale are drawn from the current Chrome settings. I would have loved to keep the choice open but I did not find a way of doing this with chrome.i18n.

Hi Jörn, I've had the missing castling announcement again today. I've only had it on White long castles so far.

Thanks.

Dear Jörn, thanks for pointing this out. I was able to change the default browser language to German and the moves are announced in German now. Thanks for your great work and your super support! Very much appreciated.

My firmware version is 2.5.7.

Perhaps if you get this working, I might give the board another look. I know that their app and system is horrendous, so I would never use that but your extension makes playing online a breeze and the board does travel well for a full-sized set.

I have a square off swap board so can help with this board. Will try and see where i can find the firmware version.

I know that there is an app called Whitepawn that can connect with the square off pro board for online lichess play. Maybe that developer has some square off pro readouts? To save you some trouble.

I have no idea if the Square Off Pro and the Swap are compatible. The infos that @Graham_NZ gave me are for the pro. I guess, we will find out.

@graham_NZ

If i can help with the swap board let me know! I can try and get info out of it.

I used my IChessOne that has just landed after the long wait, almost by surprise, works great on Chessconnect! It's a very fast board, with solid piece recognition and connection, you do need to increase delay because the moves get recognized so quickly and if a piece falls over it can set off a move (there is some kind of magnet inside the pieces although the board doesn't feel magnetic). Just played on lichess for now (chess.com is not yet available through the app, but should be ok through Chessconnect, will try tomorrow.)

Thank you, @xctbl">@xctbl! And off course chess.com is available via Chessconnect. And I agree, the iChessOne is a very decent board.

@joernupbde

Whenever I click on "Computer" to play against a bot, I receive the following warning message:

"No pieces known. Please open options and let Chessconnect learn your pieces before this board can be used." I've got the Tabutronic Sentio 45mm that does not require any particular calibration. I know that refreshing the page or reconnecting the board will do the trick but it's a bit annoying to do that every time. Sometime the clock disappears but the game goes on regularly. Could you please have a look at that ? Thanks.

P.S. In chess terminology, the word "Draw" is translated as "Patta" (not "Sorteggio" nor "Disegno") in italian. So the announcement "Game Draw" is translated as "Partita Patta" (or simply "Patta"), not as "Sorteggio del gioco".

@Kromok2 Thank you for the bug report. I'll check later today. Is your board connected via BLE or USB? And what do you mean by "the clock disappears"?

Edit: I just checked and this does not happen here. Can you try re-installing Chessconnect? If the problem persists: can you turn on debug messages in the Chessconnect options to see, if there are any errors?

@joernupbde

Yes, I tried uninstalling and reinstalling Chessconnect and the Silicon Labs controller driver many times, both on Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge/Chromium, no use. I'm using USB connection method.

Any advice ? On Lichess everything is working fine. Could you please send me a previous version of Chessconnect (the one with the "old" connection method) ? That worked well. Thanks for your attention and best.

@Kromok2: I'll make a new version with a hopefully better detection algorithm. Would you be willing to do beta testing? If so, I'll send you a test version via PM until next week.

@joernupbde

Of course, my pleasure

I myself have a Tabutronic Sentio 45 mm square board. I wonder why we at Chess. com something doesn't work all the time. does it not detect the movement, or do the LED signs appear and then it does not turn off. For a while, everything works normally, but then problems start, it can happen that I can play a whole game without problems or not at all. On LiChes, the Chessconnect application works 100% absolutely perfectly without any problem. Greetings, thank you for your effort and answer

I’m wondering if anyone else is receiving incorrect notifications on the DGT Smartboard connected via USB. No matter what I do, sometimes it reports that the queen is misplaced. Additionally, it plays a sound even though I haven’t moved. This second behavior occurs more often than the first one.
Any ideas?

That would be interesting for me, too. I am assuming that the board sends an incorrect position report eventually followed by a correct one. In that case the sound you here would be higher pitched "confirmation sound". The one that is played after you correctly mirrored an opponent move. Ist that the sound you hear?

I have connected a DGT Smartboard via USB and my board works flawlessly. No wrong moves detected and no sounds played twice. It's a real joy using the DGT Smartboard with the chessconnect extension. I am using a Windows machine (Windows 10) and the chrome browser. 
One thing that happens though regularly is that suddenly my screen turns black during a game. If I then move the mouse the screen is restored. I have turned the screen saving option off so I guess this might be related to the chessconnect app. It's not very annoying because nothing breaks or so but if others also experience the same issue it might be interesting to investigate.
Tahnks Jörn for all your excellent development work! I so much enjoy using your app to play OTB games online.

@qnuti

Check out the power options in Windows --> power & sleep --> additional power settings. All of the power plans have the same options, next to each of them click on "change plan settings". Choose the display and sleep settings that you wanna use. You can eventually edit the advanced power options. Ciao