Digital chess board based on array of Hall-Effect sensors

This paper addresses a novel concept of digital chess board realized with an array of Hall-Effect sensors. Main task of digital chess board is autonomous detection of player's moves. Therefore, players do not have to write down their own moves on a sheet of paper. Non-invasive piece moves detection is considered, with minimum required installations in a game room. The digital chees board presented in this paper has a Hall-Effect sensor placed under the middle of each field on the chess board, while each chess piece has a permanent magnet placed on its bottom. Sensors, total of 64, are organized as 8×8 array. Microcontroller reads sensor data and sends them to a remote PC for storage in a database and board visualization. Rows are multiplexed in time, i.e. one row is active in a certain time instance. States in the column of the currently active row are stored in a corresponding matrix column. Con to this approach is in its ability to detect piece presence on the field, without the information about the piece type. The proposed approach is low cost, non-invasive and requires only power and communication cable.