Repair/teardown of DGT's Pegasus online chess board
We believe that the play area/sensor PCB may be shared with DGT's Centaur
Inconsistent piece detection (absent and spurious) on two squares.
- A thin board/sensor PCB covers the entire play area.
- The power/interface PCB is connected to the board/sensor PCB by a ribbon cable.
- The board/sensor PCB is not accessible without delaminating the board surface (a polyester sticker?)
- We used heat (a clothes iron) to assist in removing it (the board surface.)
- A light pipe array (polycarbonate?) is screwed into the black plastic ABS base at the centre and four corners (screws inaccessible without removing the board surface.)
- The rear surface of the board/sensor PCB holds the play area control electronics.
- There's an IC on the rear surface of the board/sensor PCB (part of the control electronics, acting as a sensor interface?) Possibly R5F51303ADFL
- The rear surface of the board/sensor PCB also holds the LED array, LED drivers (8xSTP08CP05) and interfaces to the light pipes (to bring the LED light output to the board surface.)
- There are row/column tracks on the front and rear of the PCB running to each square - inductive piece detection (essentially very short range metal detection.)
- There was a broken track at the end of a row/column leading to inconsistent/missing piece detection.
- The faulty PCB track was repaired, and following board calibration (a normal process of using the board) the board seems to work as intended.
- New board artwork was maunfactured and attached.