Playing chess versus AI is a great way to learn how to play when nobody else wants to. However, there's a certain something about playing chess with physical pieces that a digital recreation can't replicate. Fortunately, this Raspberry Pi board mixes the best of both worlds by adding an AI chess bot to a physical board with magnetic moving pieces.

Someone got a Raspberry Pi connected to a physical chessboard

In a post on the Raspberry Pi subreddit, user Lower_Ad530 showed off their latest project. It's a physical chessboard that uses a Raspberry Pi to calculate the next chess move, then acts it out using moving magnets under the pieces.

The creator also posted a full description of the project on the Readymag website, where they go into more detail about how it was built:

The Pi Board is an advanced automated chess system powered by a Raspberry Pi, utilizing an XY stepper motor mechanism and magnets to move chess pieces seamlessly across the board. The development process involved several key stages, including precise calibration of stepper motor coordinates, calculating the weight of each piece for accurate handling, integrating a robust chess engine, and optimizing piece-grabbing strategies and movement detection.

The website says that the player can adjust the difficulty of the bot to suit their needs, and also allows them to pick which side they want to play. The Pi can also connect to the internet and allow a remote human player to send their moves to the board, which sounds excellent.

The website doesn't link to any schematics or a means to buy your own, so it seems to just be a cool demonstration for the time being. However, we hope that the inventor lets other people enjoy this amazing project in some way or another.