New (& cheaper) DGT e-board

DGT made new e-board. 'DGT Smart Board'

Same functionality as previous e-boards, but cheaper cause it is made of plastic, DGT says.

It will on the market end of November.

http://www.digitalgametechnology.com/index.php/products/electronic-boards/smart-board

What do you thick about it? I think previous e-board are too expensive for regular hobby players, and maybe this version is affordable and worth to buy.

Interesting, but can it beat $20 ? 

I'm currently working on something similar and the price for a low-end DIY version is ~$10 in materials.  I have a prototype that is working; maybe I'll put up a video or something.  (The prototype has ~$20 in materials.)

The main reason is to record chess games played OTB.  The prototype can store multiple games (about 100 game, assuming 100 plys per game) on the chessboard itself in non-volatile memory and downloaded via USB connection to computer later.  I'm thinking for the final product of replacing USB with Bluetooth for phones connection since that allows me to have real-time game broadcast/analysis.  BT ucontrollers are actually even cheaper than USB!

It is available at this link: https://www.newinchess.com/dgt-smart-board

But it will be shipped on December, 10th.

@mgx9600...sounds really good...BUT...no matter if it is your DIY board or he my loved one () DGT eboard... one thing is still missing... the native chess.com support... and no one from chess.com seems to care. Really sad.

Harry

300$ ... they must be kidding

@ganz_unten its around $409 dollars still bit high. and almost same price with the wood version around $539 dollars. not to many vendors offering this device here in US market. hoping it will lower the price soon. 

I believe this price is only the board, without the pieces. Pieces cost more 110 euros. I live in Quebec and for me it would arrive here with a total cost around CAD$500. 

I found a video about the product, explaining by CEO of DGT

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgFcD8hiXjk

It looks quite good actually... but I think $400 for plastic board + pieces is way too expensive. Maybe around $300, more hobby players will be interested.

way over priced to be successful -- $100 for the board is easily making money -- anything more than that is just crazy.  maybe limit release is why they have such a high price?  makes no sense!  why bother at that price?

I will wait some months to see what will happen to the price. But according to the e-Shop the board with indexes is already sold out.

I would suspect the sales are from organizations that very likely are paying a much reduced price per a unit.  Based on the DGT CEO the new plastic board with pieces should be selling for 250 euro or 300 USD, he also mentioned it would sell even cheaper in India.  Obviously, they are making plenty of money on this new board, he mentioned 50% saving from the wooden board -- plastic should be more like a 80% savings.  It does look like a quality made plastic, still, it is difficult to understand why the electronics are so expensive -- it is just sensors, very cheap electronics.  If they are making the electronic components right very little cost should go into assemble and packaging.  My guess is they could easily sell the plastic board with the plastic pieces for under 200 euro as a package, more like 150 euro and I would definitely purchase one.

There is the video on YouTube (in German): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-k2j5kdtpcM&t=667s

It looks pretty decent but the cost is hard to justify.

I've been working on an eboard for awhile now.  Wow, I think it has been more than 1/2 year!!!  Oh, how time flies when you are having fun  : )

Would anybody be interested in a board for $10?  I made a board using just wires on the board and metal (to close the switch) on the pieces.  (Ok, so there's a few other components but the sensiing tech is just contact switches).

Would anybody be interested in a board for $20 that lets you use your existing chessboard but requires magnetic pieces?  I made a board using hall effect sensors.  It is an underlay wher eyour normal chessboard would go on top.

Would anybody be interested in a board for $150 that lets you play with standard tournament set with vinyl board and weighted plastic pieces?  I made a board using induction proximity sensors (weighted pieces for induction and vinyl board to be thin).

The above yielded working boards.  I've also tried many, many different photo sensors (even tiny solar panels!); but these boards don't work well (there's trouble with shadows and light conditions that make the software too complicated for a 1-man hobby project).

The board supports natural piece movements, castling, promotion, en passant.  Multiple games are stored on the board.  The resulting PGN also contains the amount of time the players took to move on each turn.

There are also R&D, marketing, etc costs in addition to material cost.  For example, is it reasonable to expect to pay $0 for downloaded software since there's no materials?

My board is entirely free of the above costs because I'm not charging it. If fact, I generally make all my hobby stuff entirely free simply because I make them to use myself and decided to let others in on the benefit.

[COMMENT DELETED] 

Sorry, I should know better than to feed a troll.  

Slapped myself on the hand and deleted my comments.  You will thank me later :-)

I have been meaning to put together a demo video; just haven't gotten around to it because the board have a low priority now that my son has can write well enough to keep score.  In fact, it is currently in storage (actually, I made several boards).

However, I have been wanted to  do a video on it to show folks how a decent electronic chessboard can be made with only $20 worth of parts.  I'll see , maybe next weekend.

Current Features:

- The board works with natural movements; you can slide the pieces, castle king or rook first; capture by removing enemy first or later; en passant in any way (removing enemy first, moving first, whatever);

- Promotion is tracked and available to later review unless the piece type can be determined automatically;

- Undo moves are supported (this includes support for piece knockovers) ;in fact, simple undo like when you are in check and moves something that didn't address the check and undo is automatically supported;

- Should be compatible with USCF tournament rules, e.g. doesn't complain about illegal moves (USCF requires player to notice), no lights or other distractions when operating (lights only blink/etc when no game is in session or when the same player moved twice consecutively), and looks just like current tournament boards/sets (not the $10 version, unfortunately, the $10 version will not look exactly like the tournament board because of the wire contacts).

- Runs on battery and game info is kept in non-volatile memory;

- Download PGN (with player turn time info) by connecting to a computer via USB.

Half-developed Features:

- Writes PGN to USB thumb drives (so players can get a record of the game w/o computer, tournaments are very sensitive to computing devices); the USB thumb drive part is done, just need to move the PGN-generator from computer to the chessboard. 

- Interface with chess clock; this feature was done in the first version of the board (actually the clock was required) but I removed it to cut costs.  Now I might add it so that the clock is optional (clocks gives exact player turn times and can assist in undos by displaying prior positions).

- RNBQ piece recognition (only needed for promotion); able to do it in non-tournament legal chessboard (i.e. a chessboard that is significantly different than the normal tournament boards); was working to transfer to tournament board.

Yes, talk is cheap (but easy : )  ; anyway, let me see about next week/weekend.

I guess we will be seeing more and more of this board, especially in India (big chess market).

Source: https://en.chessbase.com/post/if-chess-is-physics-a-blindfold-simul-is-rocket-science

The EGT boards are so expensive because they're first on the market, and no one else has cottoned on to the fact that this equipment could be produced far more cheaply, and you'd still be minting it. The potential market is enormous . There are so many competitions all over the world, even down to club championships for sure, where they'd love to broadcast their games on the internet. The only thing I can think of that would prevent others from breaking into this market would be some patent issue with the technology or the software, but I can't for the life of me think what it could be, because, as pointed out above, the underlying technology is old hat.

I'm not sure what patents DGT hold that prevent anyone competing with them other than DIY efforts, but I suspect there are some.

I am yet to see a DGT board or pictures of pieces (other than the Noj Dubrovnik set which I doubt is still available) that:

a) Was not appallingly ugly (subjective, my taste, my opinion)

b) Came even close to meeting the FIDE (or USCF) specifications for piece sizes for a board with 55mm squares.

I'd like DGT clocks if they would:

a) Silence the lever!!!

b) Be consistent when using Fischer "bonus" time about whether the increment is added prior to starting the clock (yes, for blitz time controls) or not (standard tournament time controls). Arguably either is correct – the FIDE rules aren't the easiest to work out – but they can't both be

c) Reduce the price of the 2010 model to match the "North American" model. Same hardware, different programming; programming is a sunk cost and the 2010 was first so why is it more expensive merely since it has some presets the NA model doesn't?

I'm not a huge fan of DGT. Yes, the concept of boards that record moves is great. Getting it into production and having it work reliably is very much a job well done. The clocks work, but the on/off switch underneath should be a slider switch that takes some effort to move.

Pity the poor arbiter who picks up a clock to add penalty time and doesn't keep his fingers clear of the on/off button. (That's the voice of a sadder and wiser arbiter, and one of the reasons why experience counts. I won't let that happen again.)