Certabo Electronic Chess Board

I suposse you ask about the pieces; I didn´t buy the chip-pieces, but they send the chips with the board. They sent me the 25mm chips, and I have attached, provisionally, using tape, to a plastic staunton 5 pieces set, and I have just bought a staunton 5 wood pieces set, It will arrive in a couple of days, and I will put the chips properly in them. 

I had few conversations with Pietro from Certabo and I was taken by how kind , patient and knowledgeable he is so, after a  wonderful offer I could not refuse, I am now the proud owner of a Lucien Brown board and a Bluetooth module. I am waiting impatiently for it to arrive, then I will update. One thing I suspect is there is no way you'd get this sort of kind, amicable, efficient and dedicated personalized attention from DGT. Thank you Pietro!

In the meantime, I am, now faced now with the adventure of placing the chips on a beautiful set of House of Staunton Fischer-Spassky wooden pieces and have no idea how to go about it to insure the integrity of this beautiful set.

What has everybody done? I would immensely appreciate step by step advice and pictures of process and final results if owners had some and were so kind.

Ideally, I would like to place the chips under the original felts if possible, or similar alternative, so the end product looks untouched and not like a craft project gone wrong, if you know what i mean.

I did put some pics from the conversion into the forum, but apparently they're not available anymore? (the forum has been upgraded it seems): https://www.certabo.com/certabo-forum/topic/weighted-275-pieces-with-leather/

Thanks, following this thread with special interest and have bene following Certabo and it's developments for quite a while. Meanwhile just like @spaceboy68 finally made the decisison to go for it and here also awaiting the arrival of my Lucien Brown eboard. With the kind help of Pietro also managed already to install the software on my  linux laptop (at home I only use linux for really everything, since at least 15 years now). I had the same question how to start with attaching the chips on the pieces, I geuss first remove the soft vilt and later put it back on the bottom of the pieces or rather cut out a square or rectangle, will visit the link mentioend above by @harihurtig thanks!

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I was searching for weighted pieces with leather underside that would fit nicely on the Angel board. I didn't want to spend too much, to not cause huge damage when destroying a piece while fitting the RFID chips. I found a set from Philos, the 2184: https://www.philosshop.de/artus-kh-70-mm-schachfiguren.html. The color goes along nicely with the Acacia Boxwood/Acacia Brown-Marrone that I've chosen for the Angel. The drawback for this set is that it only comes with one queen for each color. But as I did find an offer with rebate at Thalia, one set was 24,79 EUR. So I did order two sets.

First I did use a hobby knife to separate the leather from the base. I've removed any adhesive residue from the leather with scissors. The pieces had some kind of plaster/cement in the base to cover the weight. This can easily be removed with a chisel or flat screwdriver. The only downside with this set is that some pawns had the weight glued in in a way, where it was nearly flush with the base of the piece. The weight is made from some hard alloy, so a rotary tool is needed to make space for the chip. I just skipped those pawns as I had two sets anyway.

This 2,75" set is too small for the regular chips. The chip diameter exactly matches the base from a pawn. So I got some "naked" chips from Certabo. They're a bit fragile, so I did glue them in with epoxy resin. That will protect them. Of course you do want to test the chips before gluing them in. After the epoxy did cure, I've re-applied the leather to the base with contact adhesive.

The final result looks pretty good, indistinguishable from the piece set before modification. Weight comparison with the Certabo 2,5" pieces:

2,5" pawn: 3,8g
2,75" weighted pawn: 8,6g

2,5" king: 11,4g
2,75" weighted king: 26,6g

WOW. Very informative! It also looks very  interesting, thank you, I will certainly keep it in mind as a good option in my research. What kind of leather are you using and why do you prefer it to felt or billiard cloth?

thx

Hi! I would like to ask if you can use Certabo board to play a rated game against Fritz17? I want to play rated games against Fritz on an e-board and I wanted to know if Certabo supports this. Has anyone tried a rated game against Fritz on a Certabo board? Thank you.

A group of us had a Certabo tournament on the weekend. It was great to play a series of games with other owners around the world.

I'll try how durable and reliable Certabo boards are. It's unfortunate that the DGT Centaur that I ordered becomes defective in just around 7-months even if I don't use it regularly. I just hope the DGT team will contact me and provide support. Here's the video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/nEhYXP3gjzM

Does one need to purchase the DaVinci Chess Computer to play on chess.com or is there some sort of software that reads the chess position etc on various chess sites? The description for the chess computer is a little unclear. Thanks in advance! https://www.certabo.com/prodotto/davinci-extreme-chess-computer-15ghz-quadcore-processor-2gb-ram-carbon-copy/

No you can use a PC. Have a read here and download the PDF explaining how to log onto Chess.com. https://www.certabo.com/download/

I recently bought Certabo after abit of research. And would like to share some opinions/review on this electronic chessboard. I was looking for a smart chessboard that is able to play against bots around my rating, and also against humans via online platforms like chess.com. There are some boards that does that, like DGT. And the price range is similar to Certabo chessboards. All you need is a chessboard like Angel Brown (459€), and a Chess Set 2,5"(109€). This sets you back to 569€, which is pretty standard for a smart chessboard. You just need to connect the chessboard to a macbook/pc and run the Certabo app. You need to get the chess set from them if you don't want to DIY your own because the chess set needs the special RFID tags underneath for piece recognition.

Features I've tested but might not be exhaustive or list might grow in future updates:

1. Macbook x86 and M1. Both systems work the same. I was able to connect to chess.com (playing with humans only under /live page), lichess (humans and bots), chess24 (humans and bots). Only firefox driver is working, which is good enough.

2. Certabo Da Vinci (raspberry pi). This is another option if you don't have a macbook/pc to connect to the board. It's a more portable but tedious option. Da Vinci comes with the built in Certabo app. It needs to be connected to a power source, so it's abit messier. It comes with some built in engines, most work, some don't. Most of which are not noob friendly, they crush absolute beginners easily. However, you can install your own engine easily. Playing with bots is quite convenient. However, it requires a bigger screen to navigate around if you want to play on online platforms like chess.com. You would have to connect and start another login session using android/ios app, so that your phone acts as a bigger screen, and you can navigate around the website better. Another option would be to connect a portable screen using the micro hdmi port on Da Vinci. I would recommend Da Vinci only for bot play, as playing on online platform is rather tedious to setup.

3. Mobile app. You can connect the chessboard to your phone through a android OTG cable, haven't tested for iPhone. I don't think it supports playing on online platforms yet. There is a lichess token option, but I didn't get that to work. Playing against the bot on your phone is easy and you can select a larger range of difficulty. Very beginner friendly. Your OTG connector should support power supply as the chessboard + engine drains your phone battery very very fast. 

Overall, the experience was exceptional. Pietro answered all of my questions and helped me out if I was stucked in the seting up process. The instruction manual isn't the clearest, it could be better. After you get over the initial setup phase, setting up the board, macbook, and booting up chess.com and playing against another player is a breeze. The technology and integration with multiple platforms is far ahead of its competitors and I believe the tech support from Pietro will ensure that you get your board to work with the latest devices, e.g. Macbook M1. In contrast, DGT boards took a very long time before it supports lichess integration. There are some interesting chess boards to look out for in the market, but I would not pin my hopes too high as it's not yet being delivered, (Chess Up and Square Off Neo and Swap). Square Off has alot of quality issues with their Kingdom and Grand Kingdom set. Their mechanical parts stop working after awhile, they are not responsive and have issues with online platform integration.

Thanks holyxiaoxin, I had been considering the Da Vinci. What makes it tedious to set up for online play?

The Da Vinci alone doesn't give you access to online play. The screen on the raspberry pi is too small to navigate to a match. You need a phone or an external display to get into online games.

Stop twisting the facts. The poster asked if you could only play against bots. I said I play against humans all the time.

When did anyone talk about players on Lichess accepting challenges from bots?

Between the two "Angel 35mm", Red Padauk, it's darker. But I personally like "Aurora Black 45mm" a lot. Ciao

I'm sure you won't be disappointed. And for any questions feel free to ask Mr. Pietro, he's a nice person. Ciao

@thepatriotbraveheart looks like you're enjoying your new Certabo board. Congrats. Can you share a few more details about it? What the square size, can you take a closer picture of the knight, and last, if you can use it on lichess and here, on chess.com?

I'm a happy user of a DGT e-board, nevertheless I always appreciate and like e-boards in general.

Congrats for joining the large family of the e-boarders!