Hello guys, I am new to Arduino and stuff. I wish to create a chessboard with rfid tags on each piece, and a rfid reader on each square so that I can track the locations of each piece. How can I do this?
I was thinking of using T5577 readable & writeable tags, assign them a value and stick them on the chess pieces. Then, use RC522 scanners under each square to read what piece is on that square. Will this work?
Will having 64 readers under a chessboard be a problem with too much interference and signal overlap?
Can I do this more efficiently? Do I need to change any parts or are these the best/easiest to work with?
Also, should I use Arduino only or can I use Raspberry Pi 4 instead?
I saw some other projects which mention use of hall/reed switches, but unsure how I can use them for my project. Any guidance is appreciated!
your chessboard will be very large, to avoid interference; at a guess, it'll be about 4'x4'
your chessboard will be expensive, with 64 readers
your chessboard will be long in the building, because you'll need something like 8 Arduinos* MINIMUM to control all those readers,
how do you intend to display the result? Presumably, you'll have some form of master, with the ability to talk to however many Arduinos are used to read the 64 readers, but what form of display will you use to depict the result? LCD, OLED, or transmitting the info to a phone app are among the things I can imagine off the bat.
I've seen Arduino projects with up to 8 readers per Arduino, but I don't know that those projects were successful, so don't count on this.
Suggestion - To uniquely identify the chessmen, you need 6 types of piece, and an indicator white/black. To me, that means each chess piece needs to provide 4 bits of information to a reader. Could be as easy as a 5-pin connector on the base of each chess piece; that's a whole lot simpler to manage than 64 readers, and the whole board could conceivably be scanned by a single Arduino Nano.
Agree with @camsysca. Your idea might work with one of those chessboards you find in city parks where each square is the size of a paving slab. Even then, maybe not.
I have used handheld RFID readers that can read every tag in 10m radius in every direction within a few seconds. The readers sold for use with Arduino are far less sensitive, but even so, they can probably pick up any tag within half a metre, I would guess.
People have successfully used inexpensive overhead cameras running Arduino code to monitor chessboards. The ESP32-CAM could probably do everything, and costs less that $10.
As others have mentioned, RFID is out of the question.
Never played with the hall sensors. Not sure if they provide an analog signal with enough consistency. Also not sure if there's any field polarity indication. Just don't know.
Yes, they would measure it sufficiently accurately and consistently, and they can distinguish polarity. But producing magnetic fields with the right strengths is more difficult. Slight differences in the positioning of a piece on the square could cause enough difference to mis-identify the peice, I suspect.