The experience I decided to tell you about today gave me a practical approach to implementing the full cycle of the project: from coding to hardware assembly. Perhaps one of the first projects implemented by innovative engineers. The feeling of pride and satisfaction after completing each stage motivated me to study the importance of electrical engineering and computer science even more.
I have been fond of chess since early childhood. Largely thanks to this hobby, I was able from a young age to cultivate not only perseverance, but also to manifest myself as a researcher and engineer.
The project of developing a smart chessboard aroused my curiosity most of all because of the difficulties that arose during the work and the constant opportunities to solve the problems that faced me.
As part of an independent project, I had the opportunity to work under the guidance of Columbia University Professor Ioannis (John) Kimissis on the development and prototyping of an affordable and easily reproducible intelligent chessboard using easily accessible components.
The chess board works on reed switches, LEDs and ESP32. Using reed switches to read the position of chess pieces, the microcontroller will report the progress to the computer, and the LED will demonstrate the computer’s reaction.
The scale and ambition of the project required constant problem solving, testing my patience and determination. One of the problems I encountered was that an inexpensive, low-power microsystem controller has only 34 contacts for sending information, however, 256 contacts are required for simultaneous operation of the components. To solve this problem, I created a beam transfer matrix for individual reed switches. This constant return to thinking based on “first principles” was not an easy task, but I don’t think I learned more as a result. By breaking down each potential problem into its component parts, I was able to redirect the various elements that made up the project in the form of small, solvable problem.