Energy Flow Diagram
Representation of the Energy and Data throughout the Masterpiece
In this project, we aimed to build an automated chessboard using a gantry system to move chess pieces using magnets embedded in each piece. For our MVP, we focused on designing and fabricating our gantry system and board to show a computer versus computer game for our final demo. For our stretch goal, we aimed to integrate a Hall Effect array under the playing surface to detect physical human moves and play against them, but due to integration challenges, we weren’t able to detect pieces consistently for our demo.
MVP: Conduct a full computer versus computer chess game with live generated moves.
Stretch goal: Integrate a Hall Effect array PCB underneath the chessboard to identify human moves and play a true Human versus Computer game.
Representation of the Energy and Data throughout the Masterpiece
We designed and fabricated a Core-XY gantry system that moves chess pieces to any square on our board and plays an entire game of chess. All components of the board are contained within the board volume, and all internal components are concealed with side panels to preserve the magic!
Stepper motors, motor drivers, and an electromagnet handle motion and piece pickup, while a Hall-effect sensor array under the board detects where pieces are. A custom PCB ties together power, sensors, and communication with the controllers.
A Raspberry Pi runs a chess engine, while an Arduino reads the sensors and drives the motors. A Stockfish chess engine plans moves each turn based on the current board state, and has selectable skill levels. Our software has fully custom path planning and G-code generation for all moves including captures, promotions, castling, and en passant.
The budget tracks costs for rails, belts, motors, sensors, PCBs, the chessboard and frame, 3D-printed parts, and miscellaneous hardware.
In our final demo we play a short game against the built-in chess engine. Masterpiece homes the gantry, senses each human move on the board, and then slides the pieces smoothly to show the computer’s response. The demo highlights reliable motion, accurate sensing, and how the physical board stays in sync with the digital game. Even over the course of hundreds of moves, you don't have to worry about gantry slip, binding, or pieces getting dropped.
Our team is a group of engineering students at Olin College of Engineering who split the work across mechanical, electrical, and software sub-teams. We met regularly to design, build, test, and debug Masterpiece together.