Quote from PabloJ on March 8, 2023, 11:51 am

Hi GokuK,

I have been playing with my Certabo board for almost three years now. Since I am travelling a lot for business again, I decided to purchase a Tabutronic elecrtronic board some weeks ago. I have been playing with both electronic boards in combination with either the DaVinci Chess Computer or the Bluetooth module (for playing with smartphone or tablet) or the Certabo Nano or my PC. I think this covers all possible combinations available for the time beeing 😉

My experience with both boards and the other devices has been very positive. The technical support from Pietro has allways been excellent. I had some issues with piece recognition but it turned out that the problem had something to do with the quality of the power supply and not with the boards or the chips. I never had a problem with power supply from my PC or from a power adapter. The pieces were not properly recognized only if I used certain powerbanks as power supply. I measured the voltage and the current of them and found out that the "good" powerbanks provide a more or less constant current to the devices (within a certain range of variation, which is normal I think). Maybe there are other reasons for the wrong piece recognition, but a good powerbank solved the problem for me (thank you Pietro for your support!!!).

I hope this helps.

Best regards

Pablo

 

 

 

 

 

 

Quote from Michiel on March 8, 2023, 4:24 pm

Ik gebruik thuis al 15 jaar alleen linux (momenteel sinds enkele jaren Solus linux) en krijg mijn Certabo eBoard er meestal wel mee aan de praat op Lichess. Soms als ik het langer niet gebruikt heb kan het wel eens puzzelen zijn om het opnieuw aan de praat te krijgen (omdat bij updates sommige dependencies broken kunnen zijnd enk ik)..

Enige hickup is dat je na het spelen van een partij op lichess als het ware even helemaal opnieuw moet opstarten, meestal kan je niet direct een volgende partij spelen. Als het ware moet alles elke keer even opnieuw gecalibreerd worden na een frisse herstart lijkt het. Maar los daarvan werkt het fraai!

Naast dat mijn Certabo bord gewoon een heel mooi Italiaans handmade brod is is de service fenomenaal, zoals ook elders in het forum wel eens door mij gepost (als je zoekt op linux kom je het topic denk ik wel tegen). Pietro is altijd snel en behulpzaam als je vragen hebt en denkt graag met je mee.

Voor mij was het een van de redenen om voor Certabo te gaan (de open-source mind).

Quote from Pietro on March 8, 2023, 8:50 pm

Quote from PabloJ on March 8, 2023, 11:51 am

Hi GokuK,

I have been playing with my Certabo board for almost three years now. Since I am travelling a lot for business again, I decided to purchase a Tabutronic elecrtronic board some weeks ago. I have been playing with both electronic boards in combination with either the DaVinci Chess Computer or the Bluetooth module (for playing with smartphone or tablet) or the Certabo Nano or my PC. I think this covers all possible combinations available for the time beeing

My experience with both boards and the other devices has been very positive. The technical support from Pietro has allways been excellent. I had some issues with piece recognition but it turned out that the problem had something to do with the quality of the power supply and not with the boards or the chips. I never had a problem with power supply from my PC or from a power adapter. The pieces were not properly recognized only if I used certain powerbanks as power supply. I measured the voltage and the current of them and found out that the "good" powerbanks provide a more or less constant current to the devices (within a certain range of variation, which is normal I think). Maybe there are other reasons for the wrong piece recognition, but a good powerbank solved the problem for me (thank you Pietro for your support!!!).

I hope this helps.

Best regards

Pablo

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hi Gokuk

I'm adding some more details to already great description made by Pablo. Yes the chips are supplied by the board and then they will reply sending back information. The board take power from USB and the power request is within the spec of a normal usb port so if the port supply that amount it will be ok. Some power bank else if report rated current for example 3A they use switching technology to reduce cost depending on the quality quality of the converter used  apparently you get a pure DC 5V which is enough for battery charging and many device but you may have micro voltage drops and some specific device like pi + peripherals they can be affected reflecting in this effect.

Also the chips are tolerant to very high weight of metal https://www.certabo.com/certabo-forum/topic/triple-weighted-chess-pieces/ here you find very helpful analysis from John on laptop the limit is also higher. Also in this case increasing a bit the distance from the chip to base with maybe mm shim will help much.

Another condition you can have which is the only really  unlucky one but very difficult to match  is the stealth effect which is very rare and i think it happened once to Julian and depends not on weight but shape of metal comapared to working frequency if you match exactly this ratio you will produce a stealth effect which means that no matter how much energy you try to push or how much metal you have that specific metal shape will divert the wave and not reflect back to the board resulting in pieces being invisible.  As said it is very unlucky combination and should be perfect match as i remember Julian played a bit and filed a bit  the edge/corner of the metal weight to get rid of that effect. https://www.certabo.com/certabo-forum/topic/how-to-hide-chips-in-wooden-pieces/

Hope this helps

Pietro

Quote from GokuK on March 10, 2023, 12:04 pm

Thanks everyone for the replies.

It is clear to me that the power should be sufficient which is totally understandable. Next, I should take extra precautions when using heavy metal pieces. Now I know that I don't have to worry about failing 1 game in 10 because of faulty piece recognition.

In my use-case I should be fine as firstly, I will make sure that there is no power problem by connecting to mains, and maybe test connection from pc if that works well. Secondly, I plan to use regular weighted wood chess sets. The first set would be a Certabo set purchased along with the board, the second set may be a wooden set that I fit the provided chips on.

Your answers really help,

Goku