Chess Bot

My son loves chess. The problem was he needed a screen to play against a computer — an app, a website, something. I wanted to build something that kept the physical board in his hands.

Phase 1 — The Audio Board

The Raspberry Pi sits beside the board and runs Stockfish under the hood. After I (or a bot opponent) plays a move, it speaks the move aloud — "Knight to f3." My son makes his move on the physical board, says it out loud, and the engine listens, validates, and continues. Full chess game, zero screen time.

Getting the speech recognition right was the tricky part — chess notation is precise, and a misheard move corrupts the game state. We spent a few sessions tuning the phrase-matching logic, adding fallbacks for how a seven-year-old says "e4" versus how a speech model expects to hear it.

Phase 2 — The Moving Board

The end goal is a board where the pieces move on their own. A mechanism under the board uses magnets embedded in the base of each piece and stepper motors driving an XY gantry. When the bot plays a move, the piece physically slides from its starting square to its destination.

This is the harder problem. The software was manageable; the mechanical engineering is a different discipline entirely. We're currently working through the motor controller and magnet placement. My son is very invested in seeing this part work — which is the point.