Inspiration
As a child, I always loved to play chess with my dad. Ever since moving away to college, I've missed our weekly games, so we decided to make a product to do something about this. Presenting our brand new wizard chess. I can now play physical chess against my dad in Hawaii, while I am sitting in my dorm room at Brown.
What it does
Wizard chess, by our team, Go Bruno, is an automated chess system. An Arduino controller, connected to my computer, controls four servo motors and an electromagnet. Two servos are connected via a horizontal rod, and the other two are connected in the same fashion, just perpendicular. This allows the electromagnet, which is situated at the crossing of these two rods, to move freely to any place under the chess board. When the electromagnet turns on, it grabs the piece through the board, and drags it wherever we please.
How I built it
Since my team and I came up with the idea for this project on the train to Harvard, we didn't have much prior planning and were required to think on our feet for most of the time. We connected pinions to the servo motors and aligned them with four racks that we placed in a square configuration. We also placed an acrylic sheet under each servo so it could slide more freely. We then connected each servo to the Arduino and programmed them to rotate a certain fixed distance for each square on the chess board. Next came the electromagnet: we wrapped extremely thin insulated wire around a steel rod over 500 times in order to create a fairly strong, but also compact, electromagnet. The electromagnet could be toggled on and off via the Arduino, too. When we want to move a piece on the chess board, the electromagnet is turned on. To move to a new location without moving a piece, the electromagnet is turned off.
Challenges I ran into
We ran into a few challenges while making this project. The primary issue was that our developers on our team did not specialize in python or c, which are the key software components of our project. Therefore, we were required to learn a lot of coding techniques in order to get our project working.
Accomplishments that I'm proud of
I am proud of how our team was able to make significant progress on a project that could easily take a week, in just 24 hours. Although the risk of creating an AI driven, electromagnet, automated chess board is a daunting task, we were able to bring the project impressively close to completion. Therefore, I am proud of how our team worked together to produce a cool hack, while having fun along the way.
What I learned
Coming into MakeHarvard as a group of first and second years, with only limited electronic experience, we had a big task ahead of us to accomplish our dreams of wizard chess. After multiple iterations of electromagnets and 2D gantries, we started picking up small tricks on how to strip wires, woodwork original pieces, and configure our Arduino, but above all we learned the meaning of true teamwork.
What's next for Go Bruno!
Since all of the parts to our project work separately, but not in unison, we plan on fine tuning the code and hardware to run smoothly. After this, we plan on improving the aesthetics to make the board look seamless and elegant to play.
Log in or sign up for Devpost to join the conversation.