I am not a big fan of the resistance based ideas. Other things come to mind.
Have each piece ID'ed by a specific code. Place an LED on the bottom of each peice that flashes that code. Make the playing field transparent. Put a camera under the board to record the bottom of the peices. By comparing the postiion of the lights and the patterns you would know where every peice was on the board.
The expensive part is that you would have to put a battery into each piece to power a little 8 pin energy conserving uC. When you had the bugs out of the system you could have each piece flash a few times to id itself and then shut down after each move.
If you want to use a bit more complex software you could paint a unique symbol on the bottom of each piece and do away with the electronics in them. Always a tradeoff.
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I should have qutoed text to provide context.
You are doing fine. My point is that it is good to update code and schematics in place for incrimentaly improved projects. But you are still searching for a basic model and it is a good to keep the various ideas around.
What is the least expensive, most transportable thing that comes to mind? Do you think that I could get away with a version of your idea if I used photosensors instead of a camera?
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