Hello All,
First post here! I'd like to breathe new life into a game that holds a special place in my family. If any of you are unfamiliar with Othello (aka Reversi) it is a game that involves 2 sided black and white chips and is played on what looks like a modified checkers board. The game is played in alternating turns. If you are able to encapsulate/surround the opponents chips, those chips become yours and are flipped over to match your players color. Whoever owns the most chips at the end of the game wins.
My goal is to bring this game into the 21st century by automating the flipping process that occurs when the opponents chips are captured. Instead of chips on a flat board, I would like to use 1" magnetic spheres on a scalloped board. The spherical magnets would be placed in the scalloped cups on the wooden playing board. They would be painted black on the north pole half, and remain silver on their southern half. Underneath each of the 64 cups on the board there would be individual, handwound electromagnets. These electromagnets would be controlled by an IC to pulse after a piece is placed on the board and push/pull to flip the pieces in between. The magnets would have to alternate polarity each turn (by means of an H-bridge?) so that they flip the spherical pieces to the right color side.
So my big hurdles so far are:
How to control 64 (!) independent electromagnets with one arduino... I assume that I would have to use an add-on board for 64 reversible I/Os.
How to passively sense the polarity of the magnetic spheres as they are placed on the board. I know that moving a magnet near a copper coil generates a field, so I'm hoping that I can measure the polarity of this field and translate that to whose turn it is. If not, the game is played in a predictable black, white,black, white etc... fashion so I may just be able to program it to alternate polarity.
Any insight or ideas are more than welcomed! I may be making this more difficult than it needs to be so any elegant improvements are certainly welcome as well.
Thank you!