About me
Hi, my name is Timo and I am an electrical engineer, software developer and dedicated chess player from Switzerland. I love to code, create and design stuff I am passionate about. Spending lot of time at home during the pandemic and staring at the computer screen I thought about a different way to play online chess. From the idea of the most intuitive smart smart chess board without buttons I wanted to create a simple and straight forward physical chess board to play online chess. No setup procedure, no additional proprietary app, just power it up and start playing against people online. A well needed pause from bright screens and displays, just enjoying playing chess on a physical board, but with all the advantages of instant challenges against millions of people online.
Manufacturing
I don’t want to provide just another mass produced product. I am a builder and creator and take great passion in crafting my own custom ideas. I truly believe that building your own custom product is not only extremely satisfying but also a great method to keep resource waste at minimum while also reducing the costs and risks for customer and manufacturer.
Hardware
Since I don’t want to compete with the existing products in mass production I decided to keep the software open-source and the hardware as accessible and customizable as possible while only using standard components. That’s why the software is based on the Arduino IDE and their standardized microcontroller development boards – maybe the easiest and most convenient way to start programming electronic devices. All other components are specifically chosen to be available in a high number and easy to be replaced by similar components with the same function. Focusing on a single large area PCBA containing all pre-soldered components keeps the efforts for integrating the hardware into a chess board as low as possible.
Check out the shop:
If you want to know more about the ins and outs of the development, hardware functionality or software features, check out the developer blog: