Chessconnect: a free chrome extension for electronic chessboards

It's now working, thanks a lot

Hi Joerg, Thank you so much for your amazing Chrome extension! It’s truly an incredible tool and shows the passion and effort you’ve put into your work. I wanted to ask if you might have plans to extend the software to support Chessable in a similar way as with the Chessnut app? That would be absolutely fantastic and would surely be a great help to many users. Best regards, and once again, heartfelt thanks for your dedication and hard work! Harry

@synthesechess: Yes, Chessable is on my todo list.

First was your Phoenix. Next Chessable? You, sir, are a gift to the open chess community. Thank you.

Good news: noctie.ai have added some hooks to their website to facilitate integration of chessconnect. I will try to add support for this exciting new chess site to the beta in the next two weeks or so.

Thanks!

@joernupbde

I just found this tool, it works great on my chessnut! Thank you so much for creating this!

May I ask for two features?

1. Prevent the host to sleep, I am using android device, and when the screen is off, voice announcement will stop. If we can prevent the OS from sleeping, I think it will work from start to the end.

2. Add an option to announce time left. For example: "you have 10 minutes left".

I am a software engineer, if possible, I can contribute these features.

@gambit-tc:

1. I looked into this and it cannot be done from a Chrome extension. Should you know how, please let me know.
2. Really great idea! I will add this to me to do list!

I need your help again. Version 4.5 is about to be released with these new features:

• Support for the new Tabutronic Spectrum board
• LED chessclock feature for various boards (preview video)
• New improved option dialog
• More customization options for boards with full color LEDs
• Use of internal buzzer of iChessOne
• Improved support for DGT revelation 2

I would really appreciate if you could give the open beta a try

I am especcially interested in feedback related to the iChessOne as well as Certabo and Millennium boards.

Hi Jörn

I did some tests of beta .13
Windows 10 configuration, USB millennium M820
tests against bots timing 10 min or 12 min+3
no crash under lichess and chess.com

seeing all the bottom LEDs lit, it's a little destabilizing at first
then when time passes and we are under time pressure especially against a robot which always saves its time capital!!, it is a benchmark without turning towards the screen.
during the time loss, the LEDs went out, I thought there was flashing? (you shouldn't make it too Christmasy, either)

varying the brightness of the LEDs in chess connect does not cause any change on my board

a question: can activating the LEDs in a more sustained manner lead to premature wear?

Thanks again and congratulations, expansion still enjoyable to play

Sincerely
Laurent

Thanks for testing! I will look into the brightness problem. And yes, LEDs do have some wear but in this special use case it should be everything but irelevant.

@joernupbde

Thanks a lot for your reply!

To prevent sleep, I found this extension: We can use this one, but I feel that turning it on only during a chess game is much better.

I haven't look into its code yet, so don't know how exactly it works, but I also found

@joernupbde hmm, looks like the editor here is eating my links.

The extension I mentioned is called "Keep Awake (Display | System)"

The chrome API I mentioned is Screen Wake Lock API

@joernupbde

I played a few games with the Pegasus/Chessconnect v4.5.14b (both on Chess dotcom and on Lichess), everything went great. Very stable and fast version, no problems with it. And by the way, I'm looking forward to the new Tabutronic (Cerno) Spectrum with programmable leds (I especially like the frameless one, more compact) so Chessconnect support is very welcome. Thanks and ... rock on !!!

@Kromokl2: Thank you for putting the effort into testing! Im really pleased, that all went well.

@gambit-tc: Thanks for finding the Screen Wake Lock API! I will add this to the next release (4.6).

Hi Jörn - your Chessconnect extension is very neat. I just used it to play a lichess game on my ChessnutGO e-board and your extension worked perfectly (I can't play online on lichess with the Chessnut app for some reason and have contacted their support). I also have a SquareOff Pro e-board and wondered have you ever tried to add support for it? They are not a responsive vendor (before or after their acquisition by Miko) but the e-board is decent. If the issue is lack of visibility of their BLE protocol I can easily reverse engineer and document it using a BLE sniffer (and others have already done this).

@feardearg: Graham (from Graham's Driver) was kind enough to provide documentation for the Square Off. However, since Square Off themselves are not intrested in cooperating with me, this is not a top priority right now. But this is not to say that it will not happen...

Hi! I am totally new to electronic boards. I've never even touched one. What's this I hear about 'Chessnut'?...

Yes, they are not a helpful vendor (to put it mildly