Digital Wizardry

So I just saw a photo of the board being used in the ongoing Topalov-Anand struggle – a ‘players eye view’ if you will from the perspective of black. Emblazoned rather crudely around the edge of the board were plasticy IBM logos (rather spoiling the classical look of the board). In all modern chess at top level, the boards come with sensors inside and a computer connection for the purpose of immediate engine analysis – clearly a boon in today’s age of instant communication and move-by-move analysis.

Firstly, how do these work? Are they pressure sensors, or are there magnets in the pieces? Or some other gizmology heretofore unknown? Secondly, can you buy the equipment ‘naked’ as it were, without the board? I’m a bit of a dab hand with woodworking, and I’ve made a couple of rudimentary boards. I’d like to make sets and add this digital connection, so being able to buy just the electronics would be ace. Does anyone know where I could procure such a thing?

Thanks muchly.

ED. 

Don't know about building one, but there are some pre-made out there: 

http://www.chesshouse.com/The_DGT_Electronic_Chessboard_USB_p/dgt128.htm

http://www.chesshouse.com/The_DGT_Electronic_Chessboard_USB_Bluetooth_p/dgt123.htm

There aren't any magnets, but theres a chip in each piece as well as under each square to let the computer know where each piece is located. They're called DGT boards.

http://digitalgametechnology.com/site/index.php/Electronic-Boards/dgt-e-boards-usb-wenge-with-pieces.html

I can't say if you can purchase the plain chips though.

Interesting. I was wondering how they would do it. Chips inside each piece seems a little complicated, as only the presence of a piece need be known from a given starting position, but I guess microchips are cheap 'as chips' these days. 

I was wondering too (I use sensors, etc. in my sculpture projects). Could be RFID (http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/gadgets/high-tech-gadgets/rfid.htm) though that would require a reader on each square - which would be pricey.

Hmmm... it could indeed. I think it will take a bit of research on my part. What sort of sculpture do you do? 

My web site is out of date but a sampling: http://tinyurl.com/3xfbxvk

I did a quick search for RFID readers and they are cheap ($24-34.) if you only need a few but I would think you would need 64, so the costs add up.

http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_id=8628

In a production environment they would get them bulk though so the price would be 1/2 or 1/3 of that (or less). The price for one of those boards was @ $800.

Of course it would be easy to do using camera vision and ARToolkit or similar tag tracking software. http://www.hitl.washington.edu/artoolkit/

That's some bloody impressive installations mate! Interesting stuff. I'll get back to you with my findings.

Hey, thanks!

@ the digital chess board: I asked some of my Dorkbot friends about it (electronic geeks) and one of them dug around the site and came across this photo:

I'm not making complete sense of it though. My guess is that the RFID reader antenna is embedded in the board in a way that they can do row/column scanning to isolate each square. All conjecture though - I haven't worked with RFID. Be fun to hack around with.

EDIT: dug around a bit more and came across this:

http://www.instructables.com/answers/id-like-to-make-a-rfid-chess-board-that-can-recor/

(boring patent: http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/7205896/description.html)

And some discussion: http://www.electronicspoint.com/switching-between-rfid-antennas-one-reader-100-antennas-t75634.html

Did it indeed? What are your initial thoughts?