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Portable Wireless Chess Station

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Quantum1982

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I am a qualified computer programmer with modest qualifications, experience, but with a lot of vision.

I have a modest knowledge of hardware capabilities and technology, but am learning new things every day.

I am also a good competitve tournament chess player.

I want to know if the following is possible.

I would like to make this an open problem to have as many ideas as possible.

The challenge is to make a touch screen computer board that can be used in chess tournaments for competitive play. It must be fast enough and clear enough
for the chess player to be able to play quick moves. The screen size must be at least 12".
We want to use this in our chess clubs and local chess tournaments.

1. The board must have it's own memory, processing capabilities and signalling capabilities, such that it can run small custom made micro-applications made in languages like C,C++,ASM. Memory must be at least 2 MB.

2. It must be able to transmist signals wirelessly to and from a centralized server/laptop.

3.The display screen must be as cheap as possible, with grayscale or color if possible.

4. The electronic components must be as cheap as possible, and could maybe be made from 2nd hand recycled components.

5. The board must be able to respond to finger presses instantly.

6. Two separate boards must have the capability to communicate with eachother through a special port and communications protocol.

7. The batteries must be rechargeble and as long lasting as possible.

8. It must have the ability to be powered by an external electrical supply.

9. It must be able to be download software from a PC/laptop for upgrading and maintenance purposes.

10. If touch screen turns out to be to expensive, the board must be able to interface with a mini-mouse or least some sort of grid board with sensors connected to the
chess board. This must also be as cheap as possible.

11. It must be able to record at least one game, that can be played over later in analysis mode.

12. If it turns out that touch screen is too impractical, then maybe old LED's or dotmatrix displays can be used. Older pentium 1 architectures can also maybe used for processing.

In fact, any re-working of an old idea could solve the problem. It's just one of those situations where the best possible cost and performance optimization is necessary.

Now if that means using old digital watch technology, then so be it.

So, the best solution will be graded according to the following :

1. Screen size
2. Cost of individual components.
3. Ability to use recycled/2nd hand components
4. Framerate
5. Resolution
6. Overall weight
7. Encasing material
8. Rechargeble battery type
9. Life of battery
10. Power consumption of overall board
11. Time to recharge battery
12. Ability to transmit signals wirelessly to another board and also to server/laptop
13. Ability to store and run bespoke software written in C or asm.
14. Ability to identify each board with a unique address or GUID that is not equal to any other chess station in the world.
15. Ability to resist signal interference.

The ambitious goal ( unfortunately ) is get all of this to be manufactured and produced between $5 to $10 at most.
That will be about R50 to R100 in our currency.

I also want to know if it would be possible to take existing normal plastic chess board and pieces, digital and mechanical clock components, melt them down, recycle them, and use them for parts in the chess station board.

Sorry if any of the words are ambigious, I am not an expert eletronics engineer ,still have a lot to learn.

Thanks for listening :)
 
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5-10? Not gonna happen, a clear bright wide angle touch screen of a usable chess board size alone is going to be several hundred dollars. Nice vision but completely impractical from a device standpoint. The cheapest tablet PC's out there run about 400 dollars or so. If you have programming experience it should be pretty easy to make a chess board applet for a tablet PC.
 
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