BillyGate v0.1.5 and Virtual LEDs

Integrating client apps with chess e-boards that use LEDs to highlight opponent moves (such as the Square Off Pro) is harder than it looks. It looks so simple. The client app tells the e-board to highlight move squares and the e-board uses its sensors to tell the client app where pieces have moved. But what happens when the e-board player mis-reads the indicated move LEDs and makes a legal move … but it’s the wrong move?

In my experience with chess e-boards these accidental mis-moves happen in something like one in three games. It's usually because a piece obscures the board LEDs or an opponent plays an unexpected move. A good example is LEDs highlighting g1 and e2 to signal the move Nfe2. The e-board player mis-reads this and pushes the e-pawn from e2 to e3. Or the e-board signals e2-e3 but the player was expecting e2-e4 ... and plays it.

These mis-moves can result in the client app losing sync with the e-board. The client app sees the e-board diverging from the game position and lights more LEDs to highlight the divergence. The player sees more LEDs and gets more confused. Most if not all e-board owners have at some point ended up in this frustrating situation, often with the clock ticking down and rating points on the line :)

Earlier versions of BillyGate addressed this by highlighting mis-moves and detecting ‘fixes’: moves that restore the game position to legal alternative positions. I took this approach initially because I worried about using client app LED signals to identify correct moves. Different client apps signal the same opponent moves in different ways and also use board LEDs for other purposes (e.g. to highlight knocked-over or mis-centred pieces).

But after much experimentation and many test games v0.1.5 of the BillyGate firmware introduces a feature I'm calling virtual LEDs - adding client app LED signals to its move detection logic - to avoid registering legal moves that do not agree with client app LED signals. This makes it harder for e-board players to make the wrong opponent move and easier to recognise and correct them when they do.

Download and install v0.1.5 of the BillyGate firmware and try it out!