PicoChess v3.3 Bookworm Images [14 June 2024]

[RandyR]

Hi Everyone,

I have updated my images to fix some issues with a few retro engines (thanks Dirk). Also, the Cray Blitz and Crafty engines (Wine image) have had some improvements/changes. Crafty now supports move time settings. Cray Blitz has been consolidated into one engine (press the lever to have Cray Blitz switch sides) and has been set to operate at 5 sec/move. Currently this can be be changed by editing the inbetween.ini file located in aarch64/windows64/Cray_Blitz and changing the following entries of the [Client2Server] section (in this case the time is set to 10 sec/move):

[Client2Server]
rejected reuse := st=10
a2a3 := no\nst=10\na2a3
b2b3 := no\nst=10\nb2b3
c2c3 := no\nst=10\nc2c3
d2d3 := no\nst=10\nd2d3
e2e3 := no\nst=10\ne2e3
f2f3 := no\nst=10\nf2f3
g2g3 := no\nst=10\ng2g3
h2h3 := no\nst=10\nh2h3
a2a4 := no\nst=10\na2a4
b2b4 := no\nst=10\nb2b4
c2c4 := no\nst=10\nc2c4
d2d4 := no\nst=10\nd2d4
e2e4 := no\nst=10\ne2e4
f2f4 := no\nst=10\nf2f4
g2g4 := no\nst=10\ng2g4
h2h4 := no\nst=10\nh2h4
g1f3 := no\nst=10\ng1f3
g1h3 := no\nst=10\ng1h3
b1a3 := no\nst=10\nb1a3
b1c3 := no\nst=10\nb1c3

Alternatively, there are 2 example files in the folder (inbetween_5s.ini and inbetween_10s.ini). Just copy the file as inbetween.ini:

cp -p inbetween_10s.ini inbetween.ini

which will overwrite the current inbetween.ini file. Unfortunately, to accomplish this within the PicoChess menus would take some time and effort since Cray-Blitz is neither a UCI nor a Winboard/xboard engine.

As before, please read the documentation. The links (below) are unchanged.

Randy


64-bit Bookworm Lite (4.6 GB)

64-bit Bookworm Desktop (5.2 GB)

64-bit Bookworm Desktop with Wine (5.7 GB)

[Luigi Vogliobene]

Thank you Dirk & Randy

Luigi

[Henri]

Hi Randy,

Yes, it's me again... :( Cray Blitz does not work here. Tried it on Pi4 and on a Pi5 with an untouched wine image. The engine simply does not respond.

Am I the only one (you never know)?

Henri

Op zaterdag 15 juni 2024 om 01:01:51 UTC+2 schreef RandyR:

[Randy Reade]

Hi Henri,

Are you able to run it from the command line?

cd /opt/picochess/engines/aarch64/windows64

./crayblitz

I think those are the commands - I'm not at my Pi.

Randy

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[Henri Spijkerman]

Hi Randy,

Same here, but have access, see attachment.

Henri

Verzonden vanaf mijn mobiele... huh dinges

Op za 15 jun. 2024 21:16 schreef Randy Reade <randy...@gmail.com>:

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[Randy Reade]

Did you remember to select 'no book'?

[Henri]

Hi Randy,

Of course not! All is well with 'no book'.

Sorry to be of a nuisance again, thanks and have a nice day.... :)

Henri

[RandyR]

[Peter Eggen]

Hi,

I do have a question regarding speed.

Let say, your use case would be to just play with your with connected DGT-Board and accepting the use of another networked iPhone/iPad to control the Display.

Should I than prefer going with the Desktop Image or with the (reconfigured) Lite one? I don't care much about disk space as my SD-Card is big enough.

I assume the Wine Image is only good if you need to use other x86 Type Engines and I assume the Wine Emulator would certainly eat up resources in this,

which I do not want and free as much resources for the Stockfish Engine that runs without an emulator natively on the Pi. But is the Lite Image more speedy over the
Desktop Image? I assume the main use for the Desktop Image is to be able to connect a monitor to the Pi. Alternative would it make then more sense to go with the 
Desktop (to spend less time with additional re-configuration required for the Lite Image) and just boot to console i.e. not starting the X-Server.

Thanks for any Ideas

With kind regards 

Peter

[Randy Reade]

Hi Peter,

If I understand you correctly, you can use the Lite image and operate the web interface using your iPad. An attached display is not needed. The desktop image was created for those who used the Pi with a monitor attached and also to make it easy to see the custom artwork if using retro engines (MAME). Also, users could hook up a mouse and keyboard and customize their system using a (possibly) more familiar Graphical User Interface. We currently use Chromium as the web browser on Desktop which (from what I have read, not tested) requires the X server to be running. Apparently there are browsers that can write directly to the framebuffer and wouldn't require X to be running (so I assume the Lite image could work in that case).

As for resources, yes, running the Desktop will seem sluggish on an older Pi. I haven't done any benchmarks but I don't think there would be much effect on engine strength unless you start running out of memory.

And, yes, if you have no interest in running x86 engines on the Pi then I wouldn't use the Wine image (you could always run remote engines on an x86 machine.

So, if you don't have a display attached to the Pi I see no reason to run the Desktop image.

On a different note, the Lite image isn't very Lite any more partly due to the prerequisites for running MAME. I did try switching to DeitPi as the OS for the Lite image but ran into issues that I couldn't easily solve but I may give it another try in the future.

Hope this helps.

Randy

[RandyR]

I was successful getting PicoChess installed on a DietPi image. Not sure what the problem was previously but it was fairly easy.

I'll do some comparisons to see if it's worth switching the Lite image to using DietPi. It's a bit different from RPiOS, but is based on it. The one drawback may be easy of setting up wifi on a custom image. It will probably require connecting ethernet or a monitor/keyboard and running dietpi-config (similar to raspi-config). It doesn't use Network manager so RPi-Image won't work as far as I know.

Randy

[Randy Reade]

That should have said RPi-Imager.

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[RandyR]

I did some comparisons on the stock DGTPi (Pi3b) between my PicoChess v3.3 Lite RPiOS image and one made with DietPi OS. With the unmodified picochess.ini, after boot when PicoChess was running and connected to a DGT BT board with the pieces in the starting position and comparing using htop, there isn't much difference.

               DietPi            Lite

         Mem:  572MB             589MB

         Swp:  0K                100K

Load Average:  0.37 0.38 0.24    0.13 0.14 0.09

Running StockfishNN at full strength (Elo 3190, 3 threads) in analysis mode (FEN 8/3P3k/n2K3p/2p3n1/1b4N1/2p1p1P1/8/3B4 w - - 0 1) for 5 minutes:

         Mem:  621MB             638MB

         Swp:  0K                1.46MB

Load Average:  3.49 2.17 1.04    3.21 2.36 1.14

        Temp:  73.0C             64.5C

Stop PicoChess. Allow temp to get below 60C. Benchmark StockfishNN twice:

         38550/38558 nps      40004/39951 nps

So, I would say no compelling reason to switch the underlying distro to DietPi. 

For those curious, here are the numbers when using the PicoChess v3.3 Desktop image in a stock DGTPi with a 2 GB swap file and monitor attached (not an easy task to get running - waited many minutes after boot before PicoChess was ready and many more minutes before the Chromium kiosk mode started):

     Desktop Image on DGTPi

         Mem:  435MB

         Swp:  638MB

Load Average:  0.27 0.66 1.50

Running StockfishNN at full strength (Elo 3190, 3 threads) in analysis mode (FEN 8/3P3k/n2K3p/2p3n1/1b4N1/2p1p1P1/8/3B4 w - - 0 1) for 5 minutes:

         Mem:  658MB

         Swp:  465M

Load Average:  4.24 3.60 2.69

        Temp:  80.6C

Stop PicoChess. Temp wouldn't go below 60.1C even with Chromium closed on desktop.. Benchmark StockfishNN twice:

         32439/32475 nps with Chromium open

         32787/32708 nps with Chromium closed (only slightly better)

Needless to say, the Desktop image is not recommended on a stock DGTPi. It really benefits from more memory and faster processor (i.e. Pi4b or better).

Randy

[Peter Eggen]

Hi and thank you all for these comparison's.

It looks like the setup for identical Processor Types i.e. comparing a Pi4 with a Pi4, Pi5 with Pi5 and so on, would mostly benefit from the additional memory the Lite Image has to offer as it doesn't have to spend any RAM resources required for running the GUI.

However, would this not be the same on a Desktop Image that has been re-configured to boot into console rather than desktop i.e. sticking with the console with the Picochess processes still running? Would this not free up additional RAM for Picochess as well? 

My setup is a Pi5 with 8GB RAM, so the question is more a convenience related one as there is manual scripting work required to configure the Pi5 Lite Image to use a non DGT-PI-Setup including the setup required for network infrastructure (WLAN Hotspot to be able to access via iPhone/tablet) which is way more easy from the Desktop than from the console

Regards Peter

[Randy Reade]

Hi Peter.

Yes, with a Pi4 or better it won't make much difference between running a Lite image vs the Desktop image as far as PicoChess user experience is concerned unless using an attached display. And running the Desktop image in console mode will be less resource intensive possibly allowing you to adjust the .uci parameters for the engine you are using (I'm thinking hash table, threads, etc.) and the Desktop is basically plug and play on the Pi4 and Pi5. In the end, I would say, if you can run the Desktop image on your hardware that's the one you should use.

Randy

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[Dirk]

Quite interesting - thank you for your effort Randy.

Am 18.06.2024 um 22:03 schrieb RandyR <randy...@gmail.com>:

I did some comparisons on the stock DGTPi (Pi3b) between my PicoChess v3.3 Lite RPiOS image and one made with DietPi OS. With the unmodified picochess.ini, after boot when PicoChess was running and connected to a DGT BT board with the pieces in the starting position and comparing using htop, there isn't much difference.

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[Peter Eggen]

Hi All,

Though I haven't tested the latest images yet, I am experiencing quite a huge lag on the connected Clock to display the infos such as Move announcments etc, and the overall experience is quite laggy. Is anyone out who got same experience and hopefully found a work-around? 

I am currently using the older Bookworm v3.2 Lite image on a Pi5 with 8GB RAM. The clock is wired with the standard cable to the DGT-Smartboard, which is wired to the Pi via USB Cable.

Off course, the Lite image is configured as a standalone Pi so DGTPi=No Option is set. Is there a recommended setup procedure regarding the wiring i.e. first start the Pi wait and connect the clock at last or leave everything connected upfront before booting? It appears that he system commands get buffered in a queue where it takes some time to have them appearing on the clock display.

I am aware that because of me using a Pi5, I cannot work with a special cable making use of the i2C connection with the clock.

Regards Peter

On Saturday, June 15, 2024 at 1:01:51 AM UTC+2 RandyR wrote:

[Randy Reade]

Hi Peter,

There is going to be a slight delay (usually around a second) when using the clock this way since the move is first sent to the board, then from the board to the clock. Also, there are many things going on. Once the engine tells PicoChess it has a move, it stops the (internal) clock. Then it sends a command to stop all clock displays (serial clock like you are using, web display, and i2c if using a DGTPi) and resets them to the internal clock. This takes less than 0.5 seconds for the serial clock to receive the command, stop the clock, and send back acknowledgement to PicoChess. Then PicoChess sends a command to announce the engine move. Almost at the same time, it sends the command to display the move on the clocks (web, if enabled, and serial in your case). It takes about 1 second from when the request is made to the board for the move to display on the serial clock. The web interface is slightly quicker. If you set the log depth to debug you can see the communication happening and how long things take.

The important function is keeping the time. There are things that will slow down the move display - whether comments are enabled, whether you are still in book, whether you are using the Pico Opening Explorer, whether you still have the web server enabled, etc. But since the clock times stop when the engine makes a move and they don't start again until you make the engine move on the board, I don't think that a 1 second delay really matters.

There is no huge lag when testing your setup here.

Randy

[Peter Eggen]

Ok understood. However, when booting the display just shows USB Board. I try to attach my inifile tomorrow. Maybe there is a misconfiguration but I feel I have to take a long wait until the clock display responds and shows the evaluation. I am mostly using this setup in analysis - setup a position using the lift feature and use the lever to toggle whos turn or so.

Peter 

[Randy Reade]

I'll have a look at analysis mode. Perhaps it operates differently when you don't start up in normal game mode. Make sure you removed the config.txt lines specific to the DGTPi and are using the kernel8.img as well on the Pi5.

Randy

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[Peter Eggen]

Hi,

I also discovered something in the log files - there are a lot of messages regarding "board - _watchdog (ser) clock is locked over 2 secs"

I am attacheing my picochess.ini and latest logfile.

[Randy Reade]

I have seen the odd '(ser) clock is locked' warnings before but just ignored them. You seem to be getting far too many. I don't know what the cause is. Low clock battery? A board issue? Clock hardware? I set up my system (BT DGT board connected via USB to Pi5, DGTPi used as DGT3000 clock connected to board with clock cable) in analysis mode and it operated normally. I do not have any warnings in my log file.

Randy

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