Quote from Pietro on December 1, 2018, 6:44 pm

Hello Cameron

Good point and thank you for suggestion! We like to know and we do the possible to fulfill requests.

Anyhow starting from those

• The capability of Playing on Lichess, chess.com etc. (This is a big one for me)

we are doing activity have a look at the news here we should have soon support for Lichess and other stuff so you can easily play using your phone have a look in the news section https://www.certabo.com/certabo-forum/topic/acc-for-android/  About Chess.com we have already inquired about this and we are waiting to see answer and how we can move forward.

• Opening books - even a modest one

yes we know about this necessity to integrate the support for some books we need to make it at GUI level so it's taking a bit to implement this feature but it's planned. 

• Move alert - a (pleasant) sound that can be toggled on and off to indicate when Certabo has made its move

ok shouldn't not take much we see if can implement within next release, actually rather than sound, also thanks you other users suggestions, we were thinking about blinking led on chessboard during the engine time and still leds light when move is found. 

• Position setup

yes this was forecasted and we try to do with next release in a week -ten days. So when you will start a game you will have option to start a new game or setup a position to start from select white or black,  engine or human and job done so you can do all analysis and studies.

• the ability to play through games - I would like to be able to load a famous game PGN and use Certabo to guide me through the moves as I study it

this actually a pgn viewer feature which we can support but requires some rearranging of software to go back and forward in the file. Anyhow with  next version we are releasing in this coming week or next one maximum, we are getting rid of .sav file so you can just copy in saved games dir your pgn and directly resume it and start playing from it in any position, you can also navigate backward so you can start the game at any position of that .pgn. The only missing point is that you are cannot go again forward unless your do actual move on the chessboard or resume again the file. So since 2.5 version will save and load .pgn only when you load the .pgn you can then choose whatever you like, human, game level engines etc. This way sounds more logic, so you will have much more flexibility for studying with or without help of an engine. 

• A more streamlined way to take back moves i.e. indicating each move to take back with the LED

Got it we check to implement that too with can be very useful for trainings and learning.

Additional features we are introducing with release 2.5

Flipping option for the board so you can just swap the  playing side and select flip board on the software.

We implemented a very nice feature of finding the missed move if it has been too fast, so now you could even move black and withe at same time and  the board is able to rebuild the history finding the missing move, which turns particularly useful for rapid game.

All the best!

Quote from camfisher_nz on December 2, 2018, 9:39 am

Thanks for a quick and comprehensive response Pietro. This is all good news.

Lichess implementation would be fantastic. Chess.com isn't such a big deal for me but that's personal preference only.

If I may make a suggestion about the blinking LED, be careful about the rate. If it's too fast it will be quite distracting (I used to work in television and know what will catch the eye), so I suggest a relaxed blink rate. The point of the alert sound is for situations where you may be away from the board while the computer is analysing. The LED would only be useful if you were sitting at the board watching it. I did a quick search and found this sound, which is sort of what I had in mind. http://soundbible.com/1599-Store-Door-Chime.html

I am assuming that when flipping the board, the onscreen display will flip too? Setting up to continue a game as black was too difficult for my son when he had the reverse perspective of the board. He is 6 though, so it's to be expected.

 

 

 

 

Quote from camfisher_nz on December 2, 2018, 9:41 am

Here's another:

Currently you have to choose the engine and level every time you start a new game. Is it possible for each new game to use the same engine and level as the previous game unless changed?

 

Thanks.

Quote from Pietro on December 3, 2018, 7:26 pm

Quote from camfisher_nz on December 2, 2018, 9:39 am

Thanks for a quick and comprehensive response Pietro. This is all good news.

Lichess implementation would be fantastic. Chess.com isn't such a big deal for me but that's personal preference only.

If I may make a suggestion about the blinking LED, be careful about the rate. If it's too fast it will be quite distracting (I used to work in television and know what will catch the eye), so I suggest a relaxed blink rate. The point of the alert sound is for situations where you may be away from the board while the computer is analysing. The LED would only be useful if you were sitting at the board watching it. I did a quick search and found this sound, which is sort of what I had in mind. http://soundbible.com/1599-Store-Door-Chime.html

I am assuming that when flipping the board, the onscreen display will flip too? Setting up to continue a game as black was too difficult for my son when he had the reverse perspective of the board. He is 6 though, so it's to be expected.

 

 

 

 

Hi Cameron yes we know about that blinking which can distract it is a concerns also if  blink at very slowly anyhow  we are making some test actually. not bad chimes will try to implement that one.

Yes also the gui board is flipping.

Regards

Quote from Pietro on December 3, 2018, 7:41 pm

Quote from camfisher_nz on December 2, 2018, 9:41 am

Here's another:

Currently you have to choose the engine and level every time you start a new game. Is it possible for each new game to use the same engine and level as the previous game unless changed?

 

Thanks.

Well as far as the software is running once you start new game the previous choice set is always recalled.

If instead you close and restart the software, you will find the default setup with Stockfish engine etc. this is because we do not know which actual engine you may have copied into the engine directory so it it's seleted for example Houdini and it's not there after the first move the software will close down as the engine is not found. With all this new setup we added it can become even more tricky for the user we think , i'm attaching a draft of new window  of new option for games.

New selection game window

 

Anyhow will have a double check if saving last setting  is convenient

All the best

Quote from bryan.whitby on December 5, 2018, 8:59 am

Might it be better if instead of having an additional Flip Board option on the screen, why don't you  just add this command to the option of playing with the black pieces. So when you select Color to Play = Black the Flip Board command is executed and the pieces then appear flipped on the on-screen board. This will then indicate that you can play with the black pieces from the bottom of the board.

Quote from Pietro on December 5, 2018, 5:35 pm

Quote from bryan.whitby on December 5, 2018, 8:59 am

Might it be better if instead of having an additional Flip Board option on the screen, why don't you  just add this command to the option of playing with the black pieces. So when you select Color to Play = Black the Flip Board command is executed and the pieces then appear flipped on the on-screen board. This will then indicate that you can play with the black pieces from the bottom of the board.

Hi Bryan

Thanks for advice, yes we though about this and make make sense when you play against the engine and look at display, but considering we have human mode and also now board setup too and for sure other in future so we left additional option as will give more flexibility. Also for example when you want to play from board setup you have to know which turn is, if you play against human, engine if you flipped the board etc.. So need a bit of freedom but we will check time by time if can cross constrain some conditions without altering other and we do for sure!

All the best

Quote from Pietro on December 13, 2018, 11:35 pm

Quote from Pietro on December 1, 2018, 6:44 pm

Hello Cameron

Good point and thank you for suggestion! We like to know and we do the possible to fulfill requests.

Anyhow starting from those

• The capability of Playing on Lichess, chess.com etc. (This is a big one for me)

we are doing activity have a look at the news here we should have soon support for Lichess and other stuff so you can easily play using your phone have a look in the news section https://www.certabo.com/certabo-forum/topic/acc-for-android/  About Chess.com we have already inquired about this and we are waiting to see answer and how we can move forward.

• Opening books - even a modest one

yes we know about this necessity to integrate the support for some books we need to make it at GUI level so it's taking a bit to implement this feature but it's planned. 

• Move alert - a (pleasant) sound that can be toggled on and off to indicate when Certabo has made its move

ok shouldn't not take much we see if can implement within next release, actually rather than sound, also thanks you other users suggestions, we were thinking about blinking led on chessboard during the engine time and still leds light when move is found. 

• Position setup

yes this was forecasted and we try to do with next release in a week -ten days. So when you will start a game you will have option to start a new game or setup a position to start from select white or black,  engine or human and job done so you can do all analysis and studies.

• the ability to play through games - I would like to be able to load a famous game PGN and use Certabo to guide me through the moves as I study it

this actually a pgn viewer feature which we can support but requires some rearranging of software to go back and forward in the file. Anyhow with  next version we are releasing in this coming week or next one maximum, we are getting rid of .sav file so you can just copy in saved games dir your pgn and directly resume it and start playing from it in any position, you can also navigate backward so you can start the game at any position of that .pgn. The only missing point is that you are cannot go again forward unless your do actual move on the chessboard or resume again the file. So since 2.5 version will save and load .pgn only when you load the .pgn you can then choose whatever you like, human, game level engines etc. This way sounds more logic, so you will have much more flexibility for studying with or without help of an engine. 

• A more streamlined way to take back moves i.e. indicating each move to take back with the LED

Got it we check to implement that too with can be very useful for trainings and learning.

Additional features we are introducing with release 2.5

Flipping option for the board so you can just swap the  playing side and select flip board on the software.

We implemented a very nice feature of finding the missed move if it has been too fast, so now you could even move black and withe at same time and  the board is able to rebuild the history finding the missing move, which turns particularly useful for rapid game.

All the best!

Hello

We just released the version 2.5 of the PC software, we have integrated much of the points above.

We shall integrate the chimes move warning and some minor improvements, need some more days but we did not wanted to delay the release.

For the sound we will implement a move.wav so anybody can load in the directory his preferred sound file.

All the best and enjoy new release.

Pietro

Quote from Deleted user on December 16, 2018, 12:13 pm

Hello Certabo!

I registered as proposed by a Certabo employee over email. Here are some of my suggestions.

Main use for the board would be to play with engines with human like AI, solving  chess problems and end game study. Of course it would be enormous fun to play online with already existing accounts on chess.com, lichess and such...

Suggestions.

1. Make "play from position" extremely simple. Just put pieces on board and start playing by moving an already placed piece. Computer should respond right away. If one wants computer to move first he could do that for example by placing extra Queen somewhere on the board. My goal here is to eliminate interaction with LCD/GUI as much as possible.

2. Easy engine selection. Putting for example an  extra Queen or dedicated piece on a certain square would select an engine.

Look here for example: http://docs.picochess.org/en/latest/usage.html#choosing-the-engine

3. Easy engine level selection. Put dedicated piece on a certain square.

If you read carefully you will see that most of those wishes are implemented with picochess on DGT boards.

http://docs.picochess.org/en/latest/usage.html#

4. Ability to simply add more engines. Check this link out. More that 60 engines added to pichocess. https://groups.google.com/forum/?nomobile=true#!topic/picochess/KI7HTXQZszw

5. Opening book and endgame tables integration! This is high on the list. Easy opening type selection for training.

http://docs.picochess.org/en/latest/usage.html#choosing-opening-books

Make Certabo eboard main interaction interface for a player. Only use LCD/GUI/... for stuff that can't be implemented over the board. Like managind PGNs,connecting to servers,...

How is your support for hardware chess clocks?