Chessnut support

[tyson-mc]

Hey again @whelanh,

Reaching out because I have the chessnut go working really well for both analysis and engine play on windows, with full led support for opponent moves in engine play and guided analysis in the case of an existing game. It just requires some polish, and it will be good to go. I've only tested on windows but was able to play and then analyze a game vs the engine, only looking at the screen to start analysis after the game was over. I have some custom led support for variations, it makes sense to me, but I'd be happy to make it configurable if it's a wonky way to work for your users.

My one hiccup with scidCommunity integration would be that I've written my own driver to support this, O'Neill's driver is obviously closed source and wouldn't be feasible for the way I wanted the leds to function. The two easiest options would be

1. Embed the driver into scidCommunity
2. Have interested users download the driver themselves, I'm happy to host (config is easy, just pointing the input engine at the drivers path)

I'll also mention that for led support, I had to make minor modifications to the inputEngine.tcl and a few other files, the board talks well with the scid, but scid needs to report next/opponent moves and hints, so I had to create a backchannel.

If you're opposed to using my driver at all, I didn't explore trying to get O'Neill's driver working, but I'd be happy to give it a shot, I know LucasChess has its interactions with the plugin public in it's source, so I can try and reverse engineer better led support. Just not as flexible with what we can do with it.

I just thought I'd share my progress early in case any of these ideas aren't compatible with the project, better to pivot early xD. All the issues you shared with me in the PR have been addressed and work really well at this stage :)

Thanks!
Wayne

[tyson-mc]

Or I should also mention, if you have a user keen to test, I'm happy to use my fork as a test-go if they want to download and try it out. Only tested on Windows and let me know before so I can make it a clean experience

[whelanh]

@tyson-mc : That's great progress! I would actually prefer to use your driver than O"Neill's and embed it directly into scidCommunity. I was only trying O'Neill because I didn't know how else to proceed. Having something you are actively working on with scidCommunity and can test is much better.

I would say the best way to proceed if it's OK with you is if you would submit a PR to scidCommunity with all your changes. I can instruct the Chestnut Pro user how to test it from your PR. Then once everything is in good shape we can directly merge it into scidCommunity.

If you don't mind, when you create your PR, could you create a little .txt or .md file in the docs folder to explain to someone how to connect their Chestnut to ScidCommunity and how you use your interface for analysis or engine play? It doesn't have to be fancy or long. Just something to point users in the right direction.

I am excited about your work. I know there are Chestnut users who will really appreciate what you are doing!

[whelanh]

@tyson-mc : What are the steps you use to link a Chestnut board to your scidCommunity fork? The user I mentioned to you before looked at your fork and was having trouble just connecting his board via USB or Bluetooth. The issue could be that he was trying to do this on Linux. But any basic setup steps you could share would be appreciated.

[tyson-mc]

Hey! I know for a fact there is additional work needed to support Linux:

The drivers an exe and that's doing most of the work, so I'd be suprised if it would work at all on linux atm. That's next up, if your user is comfy sharing, what distro are they running? I'll use that for dev and testing.

Connecting on Windows:

I had a go at using it for an extended session last night, and came across a few rough edges, but if you're keen to try it in the meantime it's working pretty well.

At the moment I'm not building scidCommunity with my changes, I'm just replacing the tcl folder of an existing scidCommunity release. you're very welcome to use my fork but it has a couple personal QOL hacks, and it doesn't have the driver embedded in yet anyways. Up to you.

1. Download the tcl folder from my fork scidCommunity fork (eboard-led branch a must!) and Driver (dev branch).
2. Either navigate to the 'scid' folder of scidCommunity on your computer via file explorer or download a second copy and do the same. i.e. C:/path/to/scidCommunity-windows-x64/share/scid/
3. rename the tcl folder to something like tcl - backup (just in case)
4. copy the tcl folder from my fork and place it next to tcl -backup
5. start ../../bin/scidCommunity.exe
6. Tools > Connect Hardware > Configure

7. Make sure input engine is the selected radio option, delete the entries in all three test fields and replace engine command with the path to the driver we downloaded in step 1 and press ok.

you should now have the input engine console window appear, I like to undock this window as it looks a bit jank docked.

If you make a valid move as white, it should be reflected in scidCommunity. Try the sequence 1. e4 e5 2. d4 d5.... and then work backwards and see how takebacks work :) The driver retains a history of positions in the game so if you pick up e5 d4 and d5, and replace them, the driver is smart enough to make 3 takebacks and return the pgn caret to 1. e4.

Try it in an engine game it works really well, the driver is aware of when you are analyzing or playing an opponent, so leds should work and it locks you into opponent moves.

Known Issues

• It's not gracefully quitting correctly if you hit the 'x' to close the input console window:

if you see that message you currently have to restart scidCommunity to use the e-board again. If you press the 'close' button this problem is avoided

• the driver is accepting strange knight moves (nb2 -> nc6), it doesn't seem to be care what rank as long as it's on a valid file xD will fix soon but just a heads up as that can get things out of sync in it's current state
• Don't press the 'Synchronize' button yet, I haven't touched it and it currently seems to delete the game (can ctl-z but still).
• If you are precious about your current scidCommunity installation, it might be worth testing with a new installation. I can't think of any way my changes could break anything, but I'd feel awful if someone lost a nice setup testing. Very low risk but just a heads up.
• USB only at the moment, and the docs suggest BLE may never work on linux. Make sure the board is actually turned on before panic debugging xD

[whelanh]

Thank you very much for documenting this. The linux user uses Kubuntu (if you used Ubuntu, that should work also).