Play Against a Bot
Set up the pieces and play, no Wi-Fi needed
A real chess engine running on the board itself — no Wi-Fi, no account, no server. There is no menu and nothing to configure: set the pieces up and the game starts. You play White against an opponent that never gets tired.
How it plays
- 1
Place all 32 pieces on their home squares and the game starts itself.
- 2
You play White. Lift a piece to see every legal square it can reach.
- 3
The board thinks on its own hardware and lights up its reply.
- 4
Play the bot's move for it, and the board confirms once the position matches.
- 5
Either button abandons the game and returns to the setup screen.
What the lights do
Lift a piece and its legal squares light up white, captures in red. The bot plays in red: its reply flashes the from-square and holds the to-square red until you physically make the move. An illegal square flashes amber until you lift the piece again. Rank 1 sweeps as a battery gauge at power-on.
What you'll hear
A chirp when you lift a piece and a click when you put it down, with a different tone for putting it straight back. Moves and captures sound different from each other, check is a double beep, and the board chimes when the bot has decided so you know to look. Setting an illegal square down buzzes. Volume is adjustable from the Connect page, all the way down to silent.
What you need
- One board
Runs on
Open Chess Board · ESP32-S3
Built by Concept Bytes · based on bot_chess.ino · on OpenChessCore 1.0.0
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Make it yours
The Code tab has the whole game — 340 lines of rules, colours, and animations. Everything about the hardware lives in OpenChessCore, so that is all you need to read.
To upload your own version from Arduino IDE, add OpenChessCore.zip as a library, install Adafruit NeoPixel, NimBLE-Arduino, and pick ESP32S3 Dev Module with USB CDC On Boot: Enabled.