A chess clock which doesn't need to be touched. It listens to voice commands to start a game and automatically switches which clock is stopped and which is running by watching a game using the camera.
Components:
- NVIDIA Jetson Orin Nano Developer Kit
- SparkFun Qwiic Alphanumeric Display - Purple
- SparkFun Qwiic Cable - 100mm
- Logitech C920 HD WebCam
- Mini External USB Stereo Speaker
- Frame is made mostly from eitech construction set parts, rubber feet are from old printer rollers, camera mounting plate is 3D printed
This is engineering not research project, i.e. objective is to provide usable solution on certain hardware using a particular chess board or boards and not solve generic chess board and position detection problem from arbitrary angle and lighting conditions.
Therefore it is almost certain that project will not work out of the box on your hardware using your chess set without tweaking the code or configuration. Bug reports are welcome and we want to expand support for more diverse setups.
Software will store a lot of information (mostly images) in the autogenerated
debug folder. This folder is recreated at the start of the game so will only
contain information about the last game. Please include contents of that
directory in bug reports to help diagnosing the root cause of the bug.
Install build tools and dependencies:
sudo apt-get install g++ cmake ninja-build libasound2-dev libopencv-dev stockfish
stockfish is not needed for main functionality. It is used only if you want training mode to find out the best moves, who is winning, etc. It also can be replaced by any UCI compatible engine, see bellow.
Build (and run unit tests):
./build.sh
Run:
./run.sh [audio_input [audio_output [uci_engine]]]
Where audio_input is ALSA capture device name, for example, plughw:DEV=0,CARD=C920.audio_output is ALSA playback device name, for example, plughw:CARD=UACDemoV10,DEV=0. Both audio parameters defaults to default if not specified.
The last uci_engine parameter specifies executable (with full path) supporting Universal Chess Interface (UCI). If not specified defaults to /usr/games/stockfish.
Clock is controlled by the following voice commands:
start x minute(s) game [with y second increment]- starts a new game. All chess pieces must be at their initial squares. After starting game video camera will observe the board and automatically switch relevant clock after each move.stop the game- will stop the clock.continue game- will resume clock.shutdown- will halt computer running the clock. Handy when you don't have keyboard or remote terminal for a safe shutdown. /etc/sudoers file must be modified accordingly.please tell best move- will use external chess engine to evaluate current position and will tell what it thinks the best move is.what is worst move- will use external chess engine to evaluate current position and will tell what it thinks the worst move is.who is winning- will use external chess engine to evaluate current position and will tell who is winning.
- Improve promotion experience. Most of hobby chess sets don't have spare queens so players might put something else to represent queen which could be recognized as under promotion. Solution potentially could be adding a new voice command
promoting to piece_name. - Put camera on at least 1 axis gimbal so it can find chess board automatically if it is out of view.
This project directly or indirectly uses these open source projects:
- Advanced Linux Sound Architecture project
- Chess opening names
- CMake
- Open Neural Network Exchange Runtime
- Open Source Computer Vision Library
- Piper
- Silero Voice Activity Detector
- SparkFun Alphanumeric Display Library
- Stockfish
- whisper.cpp
Thanks to Nvidia for providing Jetson Orin Nano Developer Kit via AI Innovation Challenge contest and to hackster.io and SparkFun for organizing and sponsoring it.
