Chessconnect: a free chrome extension for electronic chessboards

3.4 beta is available here.

Things to look out for in this version:

• board manufacturer must now be selected in options (unfortunately there is no way around this)
• better support for old DGT eBoards
• automatic reconnect now works much better
• improved support for boards without LEDs
• changed the beep sound

Please note that this is for testing only! YOU SHOULD NOT PLAY SERIOUS GAMES WITH THIS BETA!

And you can only have version 3.3 or 3.4beta installed. Having both versions installed leads to problems. EVEN IF ONE OF THEM IS DEACTIVATED!

I would love to hear what you think of this.

Nice

Good morning,

3.4 beta

Windows 10
Millennium M820
USB serial
latency 50 ms

test under lichess and chess.com
5 random color games against robots in edge or chrome browser
the connection remains active.
3 times, under lichess and chess.com, I had to refresh the tab during a new game otherwise no disconnection.
the ads are good
The "white win" translation is not active in the chosen language, it remains in English

the analysis under chess.com works

I also wanted to do bluetooth tests, the connection is not visible
it becomes visible when I activate the weird usb connection again

still great work, I'm keeping the beta for USB which is 99.9% of my use.

THANKS, Laurent

Thanks for impressively quick feedback. I'll check Millennium/Bluetooth. Shouldn't be much of a problem.

For any of us on Linux, and particularly Linuxes that don't use systemd (if you don't know what this means, it almost certainly doesn't apply to you), I modified `goneill`'s udev rules for Chessnut boards over USB to work correctly (as-shipped, his rules didn't work for me). SourceHut link.

I'd love if this extension were to be open-sourced, so that it can be maintained even if joernupbde were to walk away from it - and to add Firefox support, since the extension is sadly Chrome-only right now! I believe Firefox supports the various Web USB APIs. It'd also be cool if a Lichess mode that doesn't use the board APIs, but instead emulates clicks (like, I assume, is probably done for Chess.com, and like I'm almost certain is done by the Chessnut/ChessUp/etc. official apps) could ever be added so that Blitz would be a valid time control, but I know that's riskier territory depending on what Lichess thinks of the situation...

Anyway, thanks for making this! Nitpicks and browser selection aside, this is cool, and it worked well for my newly-arrived ChessNut Air+ today in some quick testing for a couple games over USB!

@klardotsh: Thank you for the praise. Should I ever walk away from Chessconnect, I will make it open source. Maybe sooner. And a mouse simulation mode for lichess is on my todo list.

@lpavchess: Millennium Bluetooth sometimes takes a really long time to show up in the connect dialog. Can you try waiting for a minute or so? If it doesn't show up within a minute, then there is a problem.

Hi,

I retested by increasing the latency to 250 ms so everything is ok.
the game with bluetooh works.

Oh, one more feature proposal, to borrow from the ChessUp 2 (or at least, features that board promises when it launches): the ability to move your own piece before catching up the opponent's last move, just to resolve a bit of the time trouble playing pseudo-OTB like this can introduce.

Ugh, my original comment got cleared out - I was also proposing an animation using the center four squares when something happens on Lichess that can't be represented as a move: namely, draw offers could animate a "chase" sequence in the center four tiles of the board (0.25 to 0.5s per light, clockwise to player's vantage point) kind of like a loading spinner, to indicate needing to look at the web browser.

As a bonus cute animation, upon victory by resignation or checkmate, that same chase animation around the outer tiles of the board would be a fun, optional, touch

I still experience disconnects from time to time. It's normally in the latter half of the game. I too just reconnect and go on playing. I may be having more success by removing my e-Board from my PC Bluetooth devices and reconnecting it before using the extension.

Here's a video of playing a chess.com bot with the extension where I experience no issues:

Zara bot - ChessConnect

Interesting, did not know they were talking about this.

Wonder how they are going to accomplish it.

Oh, you definitely should NOT have it connect to your computer BT. Let the extension use the BT to connect to the board.

I remove it from BT devices, then reconnect it to the PC. It only stays connects for a few seconds before disconnecting. I then go through the connect with the extension. The extension seems more stable when I do this. There are times, I can not get the extension to connect to the Bluetooth. After doing the above process, it will connect again.

@klardotsh: I like the premove feature. It's not going to be easy to implement as this means operating at the heart of Chessconnect. But I put it on the list.

Announcing draw offers and maybe even reading out chat messages is another idea I should have had myself. 😊

Animations are already on the list.

As is the possibility to send small electroshocks through your opponents mouse or keyboard. 😏

Your having trouble getting the extension to connect when you DO NOT have the board connected to the computer BT?

I do not have any board connected to any computer BT. In fact, most of the stuff tells you not to set it up in Windows BT settings, let the app or whatever connect to the board using BT, but on it's own.

Sorry if I am not understanding.

Maybe, I can clear things up a bit: for Bluetooth LE you do not have to pair the board to your computer. In fact, you should not. But for classical Bluetooth, you do need to pair before Chessconnect will be able to access the board. Of all the boards currently supported by Chessconnect, only DGT uses classical Bluetooth for their eBoards (but not for the Pegasus).

I.e.: DGT eBoards need pairing all other boards do not.

And one more remark: the stability of the Bluetooth connection - both BLE and classic - is outside the scope of Chessconnect. This is handled by the OS and the browser. So, if Chessconnect reports a connection loss, there is nothing I can do about it. Different story when the button is green and moves are not transmitted. In that case it's most likely my problem.

Thank you Jörn, appreciate the information.

BTW, have played 2 long time control games in the past few days with my Chessnut Pro board using the Kiwi browser and extension on my Android tablet. Flawless games as far as the connection went (not my playing ). It was an absolute joy to play with my attention focused on the board with real, full sized pieces. Almost like I was actually sitting across from the other player. Thank you (again) so much for this extension.

"Chessconnect" works perfectly on my "Tabutronic Sentio" board with 45mm square. As shown by "Certabo", which manufactures these boards, which are really excellent, very good sales, because the board "Tabutronic Sentio" 55 mm square is already on sale for the price of €429.90. The only thing I don't like about these boards is that "Certabo" doesn't have any of its own applications on Android, except for "White pawn" where you can play so that you don't have to use bluetooth, because you connect the phone directly to the cable and then the phone serves as a source of energy and at the same time it transfers data to play on LiChess, unfortunately only on LiChes and not on chesscom. That's why I'm really grateful for the application "ChessConnect", which is actually becoming a very universal application for electronic boards. Thank you for your effort and I will be happy if it will be possible on "ChessConect to solve problems and repeat openings in the same way as it is possible on "Chess PGN" by Gerhard Kalab. Greetings and many more successful works that please all of us with electronic boards .

Thanks @KNAVFAR. Fun fact: the tournament sized Sentio is in fact the result of a cooperation between TabuTronic and myself and the board I am currently using for most of my development.

joernupbde.....Thanks for the reply. I am very happy that you also use Tabutronic. I personally would like the 50 mm square size the most, but I am also very satisfied with the 45 mm, as I wrote. Thanks for everything and best regards