Alternative Engines for Picochess

[DJ Dekker]

Just wondering if anyone else is also experimenting with alternative engines for Picochess?

I have compiled some UCI chess engines on my Raspberry Pi 2 (with gcc flag -march=armv6, so they should also run on RPi B+) and they all work in Picochess 0.50. A couple of engines are missing some UCI features, most notably setting the play level. I'm switching engines using the engine parameter in picochess.ini.

The engines are in order of strength:

1. Stockfish 6 (source)

2. Senpai 1.0 (source)

3. Texel 1.05 (source)

4. Hakkapeliitta 3.0 (source)

5. Arasan 18.0 (source)

6. GreKo 12.9 (source)

7. Zurichess Bern (source)

8. Cinnamon 1.2c (source)

9. Sayuri 2015.08.12 (source)

The following two precompiled engines also work fine with Picochess:

10. Toga II 1.3.1 (binary bundled with Scid vs. PC 4.14)

11. Maverick 0.6 (binary)

And this engine works on RPi/RPi 2 in Scid vs. PC 4.14, but I've not yet got it working with Picochess. It runs as a Winboard engine by default and needs a flag at startup to run as an UCI engine:

12. GNUChess 6.2.1 (source)

[Jean-Francois Romang]

I tested it with HIARCS (on windows) when developing the UCI interface :-)

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[Shivkumar Shivaji]

How large are all these binaries for the ones that work with picochess? Maybe we can schedule them in the next image?! :)

Shiv

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[DJ Dekker]

How large are all these binaries for the ones that work with picochess? Maybe we can schedule them in the next image?! :)

-rwxr-xr-x 1 pi pi  693956 aug 25 09:43 arasanx-32

-rwxr-xr-x 1 pi pi 1559068 aug 25 09:43 cinnamon

-rwxr-xr-x 1 pi pi  111996 aug 25 09:43 fruit

-rw-r--r-- 1 pi pi      70 aug 25 09:43 .gitignore

-rwxr-xr-x 1 pi pi 1289672 aug 25 09:43 gnuchess

-rwxr-xr-x 1 pi pi  194552 aug 25 09:43 greko

-rwxr-xr-x 1 pi pi  199164 aug 25 09:43 hakkapeliitta3

-rw-r--r-- 1 pi pi     876 aug 25 09:43 licenses.txt

-rwxr-xr-x 1 pi pi  429592 aug 25 09:43 maverick

-rwxr-xr-x 1 pi pi 1272896 aug 25 09:43 sayuri

-rwxr-xr-x 1 pi pi  192956 aug 25 09:43 senpai_10

-rwxr-xr-x 1 pi pi  242540 aug 25 09:43 stockfish

-rwxr-xr-x 1 pi pi  278788 aug 25 09:43 stockfish6

-rwxr-xr-x 1 pi pi  308497 aug 25 09:43 stockfish_human

-rwxr-xr-x 1 pi pi 1045024 aug 25 09:43 texel

-rwxr-xr-x 1 pi pi 2781816 aug 25 09:43 zurichess

The RPi/RPi2 binaries of the engines that were made public under GPL and MIT licenses can be downloaded from https://www.dropbox.com/s/d4gqf03tfhgmb5d/20150825_engines.tar.gz (this includes all engines except GreKo and Maverick).

[Jürgen Precour]

That would be great!
10Mb...not much. I hope, Jonas can put it on the next image (v0.5x).

Also it would be nice to have some Engine-Menu settings for this (change on-the-fly during game).
We talked about this already over skype. But this week i'm busy with something called "#115" ;-)

Jürgen

[Shivkumar Shivaji]

I can help with the change on the fly, it can be done with clock buttons. D.J., how are you doing this now, restarting picochess for every engine change?

Shiv

[DJ Dekker]

Yes, I change the "engine" parameter in picochess.ini and then restart the picochess service (sudo service picochess stop/start).

[Pablo2000]

Hey Shiv

Just read your post a little more closely... how do you do the change from the clock? I ask as my 'new' code to display a list of installed engines and allow you to select a new one on the fly (even mid game) is almost ready for release.... but from the sound of it may not be necessary??


Pablo

[Jürgen Precour]

Hey Pablo,

i guess he meant to begin to do something for it. I dont think, its ready. So please go ahead!!


Concerning your last commit (Think & Level) - MANY THANKS again!
I want to change the buttons in the following way:

Time:
=====
Button 0: display current time control [was button3]
Button 1: cycle through Fischer, Fixed and Blitz [was button0]
Button 2: no function
Button 3: cycle through new time control of the type currently in use [same as now]

Reason: keep it similar to game menu , and button 2 (middle) should be kept without function if possible, cause in game menu has alot of different function (getting even more - in my plan)


Level (actually its "Engine")
======
Button 0: Display the engines name?
Button 1: Level down [same as now]
Button 2: cycle through the engines?
Button 3: Level up [same as now]

The last (Level) is my proposal...cause i cant know what your source code is ;-)


The docu is currently wrong.
"Time mode" isnt a playing mode. I gonna change that, ok?

Jürgen

[Jürgen Precour]

Another idea would be:

Button 0:  cycle through the engines
Button 2: really do it (change). Cause the engine prob. thinking, while y go to "Engine menu".

[Shivkumar Shivaji]

I was just thinking of the idea, did not begin coding this yet.

Awaiting your new code! Thanks in advance!

Shiv

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[Pablo2000]

Hi guys

Thanks for all the feedback. As it happens I'm jigging button code at the moment. Here's how I've got it right now in my dev fork.

Added new menu 'book', so now there's 'book' and 'engine' separate.

Book Menu
=========
Button0 - Does nothing. Future use.
Button1 - Step backwards through the book list
Button2 - If not scrolled through the books, display current book. If browsed the book list, 'set' the chosen book as current book.
Button3 - Step forwards through the book list.

Selection from the board is as now. These changes seemed to make sense as I've opened it up to unlimited books (within reason!), so the book list might be long. Personally, I've been making specific books to train particular opening lines and prepare for particular opponents.

Engine Menu
==========
Button0 - Toggle"Level"/"Engine" choice. Default is level setting, as this is more likely to be used more often than changing engine (??)
Button1 - Level Down / Step backwards through engine list.
Button2 - Alternate between displaying current engine and current level UNLESS a new engine or level has been identified with button1/3 then 'set' that level or engine.
Button3 - Level Up / Step forwards through engine list.

Both of these mechanisms (which are really the same) were to cope with potentially having lists that are long enough that if you simply cycle through them, and miss the one you wanted, you have to cycle the whole list again: three engines, maybe
not a problem. 10 books, more annoying but I guess OK. 6-8 engines and (say) 16 books - very annoying, and probably the first thing I would hate if I had to live with it.


Really, really happy to have feedback and suggestions. I will change the time buttons at the same time, just cos I'm in there anyway and it takes almost no time to change.

I'm not convinced the current 'cycling' mechanism would be nice to live with for larger lists of options, like books and engines. But I'll go with whatever folks feel fits best with everything else.

As a status update, I've just got button code to finalise - selecting engines and stopping/starting new engines maintaining game state etc all done and working well. The PGN output always reflects the final engine choice, as the engine you actually beat to finish the game (or not!!). So if you feel like looking good to your friends at the club, play an easy engine on an easy level, get yourself to mate-in-one then switch engine to stockfish at full strength and voila! a victory against the fish at 2900. That will make you look good - at least until someone reads the move list! :)


Pablo

[Jürgen Precour]

Hi,

hmmm... I think, it can get complicated, if there are so many states ("switch modes"/"unless" see your text).
Esp since there is few room on clock display to let the user know where he is.


How about this?
Do a book & level & engine submenu.
Each behaves same!

up&down to go over books/levels/engines.
Button 0 shows current state (or no function)
Buton 2 selects new state (and go back to game?)

Thats another menu, but i dont think, this change of level, engine & book done too many times.



as an alternative:
"engine menu", with submenus by each button, to go to "level", "book", "engine". (=depth 2 menu) then like before.
Please keep in mind, that there is also something waiting like "ponder on/off" and more, for an engine menu.



As said before, i like more button 0, SHOWS and button 2 CHANGE something. thats similar to "position",  and "game mode" (button 0=last move).


Jürgen

[Pablo2000]

OK, so I think the best way forward will be the three menus (level, book, engine) with the standardised buttons like you said.

Maybe the engine options (ponder etc) will need to live on an 'options' menu. I experimented with sub-menus off the main menus and it got confusing fairly quickly. Too much functionality for 5 buttons and 8 characters of text!

But I think you're right, simpler menus with standard(ish) buttons is by far the best - and if we need a few more main menu items to reduce confusion in each one, that's cool.

I will get the code over to you as soon as I've juggled the buttons around, probably tomorrow evening.


Pablo

[Jürgen Precour]

I updated the docu already.
Please take a look there and implement it this way - or change it (time menu correct?)

Jürgen

BTW a "book menu" is not so much needed as a level/engine one, cause book is mainly of use at starting position, and there the Q-stuff is enough, no?
Anyway time for implement is limited (=easy task). So go ahead.

[Pablo2000]

Hi Jürgen / folks

OK, so the code is ready to put out a pull request, docs updated again as well.

I went with the scheme you suggested Jürgen and it works very nicely and hangs together in a very coherent way. I think everyone will be happy with it - thank you for making me see sense!

I've been testing with Stockfish, Human, GreKo, and fruit. Fruit from an install package, GreKo I built and obviously Stockfish and Human are from the repo. I downloaded DJ's tarball, but I can't for the life of me get any of the engines to work on my Pi2 - and I don't mean
from my code, I mean at all - not even from the .ini file. All throw OS exceptions, and I'm starting to get annoyed. All engine files have exactly the same owner/group/attribs.

Anyone any ideas? I'm really only waiting to check out these other engines before I pass the code over - with engines of known provenance it's all good.


Pablo

[DJ Dekker]

Did the tar archive perhaps get corrupted in some way? I cannot get to my RPi2 today, but I can re-upload the engines tomorrow in a zip archive.

The engines work without problems on my machine running Raspbian Wheezy (from Jonas' image). They were compiled with gcc 4.9.2 following the instructions given by the engine authors.

[Pablo2000]

Hey DJ

No it's ok... well, in so far as I now understand the problem - it's to do with the libraries that are pulled in during compile and where they are. A few of the engines are now working fine and probably would run on any Pi - but it might be worth doing some testing with different people before including the whole suite in an image.

Anyway, I got enough of them going to totally satisfy myself about the code - so a pull request is about to go to Jürgen to get it incorporated.

It covers: more logical menu order, new (and faster) button mappings for 'time', 'level' and 'book', and of course the new 'engine' menu.

It also has a few bug fixes of stuff that I came across as I was working through it. Also, a few folks have been mentioning 'random freezes' and 'failed to boot' etc. I frustratingly experienced a few of these and tracked it back to the various network operations that are performed to get ip addresses and geo-locate the player. With a poor broadband connection, or no network at all, these can be total show stoppers. So, there's a new option for the .ini file ('Network = False') which disables network attempts and could be worth trying for those that are having problems - or those like me who use the picobot 'out and about' and off a network altogether. If it's not in the .ini file, everything is as normal.

Pablo

[DJ Dekker]

Hi Pablo,
Glad to read your post! Picochess is getting better and better :)
About the network issues: is "Network = false" also going to disable the web server? I would miss that function...
DJ

[Shivkumar Shivaji]

I dont think it will impact the web server though Pablo can re-confirm.

I will look in the weekend and disable the network automatically if there is no internet or if its slow. Is the internet slow when it freezes, what exactly is the problem?

Shiv

—
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[Pablo2000]

Hey Shiv...thanks for weighing in, especially with offers for more elegant solutions!

No, the web server is unaffected - the issue was slow or unresponsive external accesses - most particularly geo-location, which was being done at the end of _every_ game.

The problem manifests itself in two ways - general system hangs at the end of a game (which has been reported), total death of the pgn game writer (so game recording packs up) and complete system no-starts due to failures in getting the external ip address for the system info broadcast (although that's in it's own thread so that puzzled me, but was definately real).

The problem came to light whilst I was finishing testing on the engine swapping (which obviously updates the pgn writer), at which point I think my (expensive and fast 150Mb!) broadband had collapsed. Of course it took me a while to realise that was the issue and not the code I was testing - typical. Further proved it by disabling my RPi's networking completely - reliably repeatable then.

So the, hopefully, temporary solution was put in of the .ini file option. I also restructured some of the code to restrict the information gathering tasks to startup. My picoChess will be mobile now, as I wanted, but I really don't think I want 'live' tracking of my locations, so once is enough.


Pablo

P.S. Pull request is out, so should be available soon.

[Pablo2000]

Just thought of a quick note:

This may be obvious, but due to the limited size of the clock display, it's worth going through your engine folder and renaming any engines you have to 8 characters long! stockfish_human for example can lead to confusion! I went with Human, and also shortened some of the other engines. Better update the docs.


Pablo

[DJ Dekker]

Similarly, the user should be careful about the names of any custom opening books. The new version allows for an unlimited number of opening books. I suggest that the documentation explains that their names should not start with any of the letters a through k (because that would interfere with the opening book map) and that the first two characters of the file name won't be displayed on the clock.

[Pablo2000]

Good point. And, of course, forgot to put that in the docs... I'll update tonight.


Pablo

[Axel]

I tried to copy your engine files into the /opt/picochess/engines folder. Therfore I had to change the rights via "sudo chmod a+rwx engines". Is this right? (Access via SSH).

When I try to change the engine from the clock, picochess freezes.

When I try to start picochess from the shell with an engine (e.g. stockfish) I get an error code like: "engine not found".

How can I mange to use and change engines with the clock without crash?

Thanks in advance!

Axel

[DJ Dekker]

Unfortunately, running these engines has turned out not to be simply a matter of copying them to the /opt/picochess/engines directory.

The engines were compiled on a Raspberry Pi 2 with a more recent gcc version installed than the gcc version on the v0.45 image. Most engines seem to pull in developer libraries that are present on my RPi2 but absent on the image.

So the engines are running on my installation, but I'm afraid that you'll have to recompile them from source on your Raspberry. In most cases this is not very difficult.

[Axel]

Thanks for your reply.

as a newbe, I am not sure if I am willing to dive deeper into the world of Debian... ;-) My primal intention was: Put the SD card with the image into your Raspberry Pi 2 and play chess against a dedicated chess computer - like in the good old  times of the beginning of computer chess. Now I have to admit that this was a too simple thought. I think I have to reassess my wishes. :-)

Can you tell me which compiler you used and which parameters are necessary?

[Shivkumar Shivaji]

Lets open a few github issues:

1. Bluetooth does not work on first boot.

2. DGT XL clock does not work well.

3. Multiple engines do not work easily.

Its also a priority for me to make #3 work.

DJ, do you have an updated set of compilations? We can include this in an image.

--

[Pablo2000]

Shiv - yes a new image is the way to go. With all the changes around engines, libraries and a whole lot of other stuff since 0.45 which address many of the 'issues' that users who want to simply be users need.

Definitely time to build a new image!

[Axel]

That would be a great effort!

I contacted a member of the Topschach company (www.topschach.de) who has built an own image of picoches version 0.51 (I think you will know him. He already put a lot of work into the topschach-picochess-distribution. Here is a video which describes how to work with version 0.51: https://youtu.be/krD_wIFfsLw )

I asked him, if he could offer his image for free download. He did so and you can find it here: http://forum.topschach.de/post1660.html#p1660

Unfortunately in my surroundings it doesn't work at all (no bluetooth connection).

He will update this image and offer it for download shortly.

[Axel]

"Lets open a few github issues:

1. Bluetooth does not work on first boot.

2. DGT XL clock does not work well.

3. Multiple engines do not work easily."

Maybe a number 4 ;-):

4. WIFI configuration out of the box

As described here e.g.: http://raspberrypihq.com/how-to-add-wifi-to-the-raspberry-pi/

The member of topschach mentioned, that his image will provide WLAN-Konfiguration via DGT-XL or DGT 3000 clock (chose SSID and input of password).

[Pablo2000]

I have tried to download but cannot.

If (I think) Benny is making useful additions and modifications to the code, it's a shame he doesn't contribute directly to the repo.

As picochess is under the Gnu GPL, I think I will ask him for his source and see if we can usefully include any of his modifications.

[Pablo2000]

Download now working ... I will check it out.

[Pablo2000]

OK.. had a play with it now. It's just a vanilla 0.51 build - seems to be USB only, or at least it didn't come up on bluetooth at all.

There is no means of setting wifi parameters from the clock - I did think this sounded odd tbh.

It would require some fairly major surgery... much more than a simple mod. I'm not sure this is even feasible. Sure we could make picochess manipulate the 'wpa_supplicant.conf' and 'interfaces' files, but it would require being able to set
encryption type (wpa, wpa2, wep etc) AND ssid AND password from the clock. Even the DGT3000 has a fairly limited character set and display size.

I'm afraid that, certainly for the foreseeable future, if you wish to use network functions on a standalone Pi setup (as I use exclusively) it is necessary to perform at least one initial boot with a monitor/keyboard attached to configure things. After that no problem.

P

[Shivkumar Shivaji]

One idea for wifi (if we want to enable it) is to have an installation wizard accessible via the iphone/android. I don't know if we have bluetooth enabled on picochess or what the way to do such a thing typically is.

Shiv

--

[DJ Dekker]

I have uploaded an image file of my Picochess 0.55 installation for anyone who would like to give it a try:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B9qWkOu8LbC8SlpOdTlneWpObk0

It works on my Raspberry Pi 2 with DGT Bluetooth board and DGT 3000 clock.

The image also contains a couple of engines other than Stockfish (Arasan, Hakkapeliitta, Toga).

GUI users may be interested in trying Scid vs. PC 4.14.

If you'd like to use WiFi, just log in at the command prompt (pi/picochess) and put the SSID and password into /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf with your favorite editor (I use nano).

[Axel]

Thanks - offering an image is generally an good idea.

Unfortunately it doesn't work very well with my equipment (DGT Bluetooth Board, DGT XL Clock, Raspberry Pi 2 B).

Neither the bluetooth connection is established nor has picochess.py started. Wifi works and I can connect with SSH.

When I try to start picochess manually from the command prompt, I get an error message:

Traceback (most recent call last):

  File "./picochess.py", line 23, in <module>

    import chess

ImportError: No module named 'chess'

Do you or does anyone have any idea?

[D.J. Dekker]

To start Bluetooth you might need to run Bluetooth Manager once (I had to do this for my DGT board, but only the very first time). Make a serial connection and mark the board as "trusted".

I've never seen the message about a missing library. Puzzling...

-------- Oorspronkelijk bericht --------
Van: Axel <mercu...@gmail.com>
Datum:22-11-2015 13:05 (GMT+01:00)
Aan: PicoChess <pico...@googlegroups.com>
Cc:
Onderwerp: Re: Alternative Engines for Picochess

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[Axel]

The bluetooth connection works fine with the Bluetooth Manger - but picochess.py is still unstartable (same error massege).

[Axel]

In this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krD_wIFfsLw) the author explains how to connect picochess to Wifi using the DGT 3000 clock.

But I agree with you and Shiv: Either one should perform one initial WiFi configuration with monitor, keyboard and mouse attached or one should configure it with the help of the web-interface in a browser on pc or smartphone.

In my opinion it would be a user friendly approach to offer some configuration possibilities alternatively via web interface (time, level, engine etc.).

[D.J. Dekker]

Did you enter both of these commands?

cd /opt/picochess

sudo python3 ./picochess.py

[Axel]

Yes, exactly.

[Shivkumar Shivaji]

Dj, 

I am updating your image via docker. I see that there are things that we can optimize, such as apt-get issues and image size, will post back soon.

Thanks, Shiv

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[D.J. Dekker]

Thank you Shiv! It' basically Raspbian Wheezy updated with a couple of Jessie packages. My attempts to get PicoChess running under Jessie or Ubuntu 15 have failed so far because of Bluetooth issues (no auto SPP connect with Bluez5), so I went back to Wheezy.

The image expands to a 16GB card, but the contents should really fit on a smaller (8GB or even 4GB?) card. Looking forward to a smaller image.

[DJ Dekker]

Shiv,

While you're working on the image: could you please have a look at the PyYAML installation? PyYAML is mentioned in requirements.txt. When I installed the necessary libraries for PicoChess using pip, there was an error while compiling PyYAML: compilation aborted because pyyaml.h could not be found. All other libraries installed and/or compiled without difficulties.

Thank you,
DJ

[Shivkumar Shivaji]

Sure. I think it's a matter of installing pyyaml dev or it's equivalent.

Shiv

[DJ Dekker]

Axel,

Do you still have the required libraries in /usr/local/lib/python3.4/site-packages/ ?

This folder should contain all libraries that are listed in /opt/picochess/requirements.txt, including chess.

You could try reinstalling them (while in /opt/picochess) with sudo pip3 install --upgrade -r requirements.txt.

Did you perhaps change anything in the Python setup of the disk image, or in pip, or in a virtual environment?

Op maandag 23 november 2015 12:15:46 UTC+1 schreef Axel:

Yes, exactly.

[Michael Cvachovec]

Hello Dj,

i´m running a v0.55 installation but wasn´t able to get your image working with my board, i´ve got an equal setup Pi2, Bluetooth Board, DTG3000. While pulling the master from github everthing works like a charme.
So i decided just getting the engines you compiled but trying to change them during the game using the Clock shows them all, but still leads to an error or game just freezes. Do you change your ini file to change the engine?
By the way before actually having played the first move in a new game i´m not able to use the menu of the most right button of the clock, i´ve to use the queens. Is this a  known behaviour.

While playing with your image i really enjoyed scid vs pc on a raspberry! Nice work
Cheers Michael

Am Samstag, 21. November 2015 17:25:20 UTC+1 schrieb DJ Dekker:

[Axel]

Hi DJ,

I just put your image to my SD card an tried to start picochess out of the box. As I remeber, I did not change anything.

I now cannot look up the libraries you mentioned because I deleted the image a few minutes ago - waiting for a working one ;-).

[DJ Dekker]

Hello Michael,

No, I don't need to modify picochess.ini to switch engines, although it would be possible (tested, it works). The "Engine" menu on the clock is much easier and always works correctly. Haven't had any trouble with the rightmost clock button either.

Greetings,

DJ

Op dinsdag 24 november 2015 18:55:54 UTC+1 schreef Michael Cvachovec:

[Michael Cvachovec]

Hi DJ,

last night i loaded new firmware, apt-get update and upgrade, and finally pulled the lastest master from github (the one with your engines). After solving my bluetooth issus (even going back to v0.45 didn´t help) by reinstalling bluez-utils with some more suggested libaries, everything is fine now. Clock menu working as it should. Engines can be chosen by the clock. Really looking forward playing with the engines this weekend.
Thanx for your help.

Michael

[clonfsp]

Hello

I have prepared and compiled my engine and now I can use it at picochess. Currently testing with icsdrone and all looks ok. The good thing about my engine (Rodin v8.0, next to be released, my calculations aprox 2700 ELO in CCRL) is that it has personalities to choose from, and also a feature that adjust its ELO as you win or loose games against it. That is nice to train: an engine about your strenght and different styles.

The bad thing is that I am not able to make picochess work correctly with DGT XL clock (due to this bug, that looks more people has: 

https://github.com/jromang/picochess/issues/142

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/picochess/yAedtkaw9Ws

)

Hope someone can look at the issue soon so I can test it and release my engine.

Best regards.

Fermin

El domingo, 23 de agosto de 2015, 13:20:39 (UTC+2), DJ Dekker escribió:

Just wondering if anyone else is also experimenting with alternative engines for Picochess?

I have compiled some UCI chess engines on my Raspberry Pi 2 (with gcc flag -march=armv6, so they should also run on RPi B+) and they all work in Picochess 0.50. A couple of engines are missing some UCI features, most notably setting the play level. I'm switching engines using the engine parameter in picochess.ini.

The engines are in order of strength:

1. Stockfish 6 (source)

2. Senpai 1.0 (source)

3. Texel 1.05 (source)

4. Hakkapeliitta 3.0 (source)

5. Arasan 18.0 (source)

6. GreKo 12.9 (source)

7. Zurichess Bern (source)

8. Cinnamon 1.2c (source)

9. Sayuri 2015.08.12 (source)

The following two precompiled engines also work fine with Picochess:

10. Toga II 1.3.1 (binary bundled with Scid vs. PC 4.14)

11. Maverick 0.6 (binary)

And this engine works on RPi/RPi 2 in Scid vs. PC 4.14, but I've not yet got it working with Picochess. It runs as a Winboard engine by default and needs a flag at startup to run as an UCI engine:

12. GNUChess 6.2.1 (source)

[Shivkumar Shivaji]

I will look at the DGT XL issue by the weekend (apologies on the delay). 

I do have a docker image for picochess now.. :) What this means is that we can have releases of images for the Pi 1 and 2 with the same downloadable image.

On your engine, first of all congratulations on the release! I very much want an engine I can train against (I am especially interested in simulating the IM level - around 2400 elo). Do you have a downloadable version for me to train/test against?

Shiv 

 

--

[clonfsp]

Hi Shiv,

I will try to make a valid compilation today or tomorroy. I am try to solve a few issues I have with uci handle. I will send you an url....

Fermin

[Marc Boudreau]

Ooooh... Docker images.

Are you planning on publishing it/them?

Marc

[Shivkumar Shivaji]

Yes, the build file for the Dockers images are now on github in the docker folder. It seems to work fine now (did some testing).

I will release a new image reflecting the Dockers work in a few days.

[clonfsp]

Hi Shiv,

I have send you a private message, but I am not sure it has been correlty sended, as google group page that not seems to refresh after send. Did you received it?

Regards

Fermín

[Pablo2000]

@Axel

I have, at last, had a spare hour and I'm interested in this possibility. I watched this video, but to be honest my German is not good enough to follow all of it - and the youtube CC translation is less than helpful. I think I got most of it, but I couldn't see any place at which he demonstrates or describes how to do this. Most of the video is a tour of 0.51, which as I said before is the standard one. I've even been through all the pico source and only see the standard code - no additions or modifications. I will say again, though, that I only had an hour of looking at it.

Can you describe for me, due to my bad German (!), how he explains to do the WLAN setting from the clock?


P

[Axel]

Hi Pablo,

I fully agree that it must be hard, to follow the video in german language and find the essential information! ;-)

The truth is: there is not much information about the WiFi configuration via the DGT 3000. It starts approx. at 2'50" and ends at 3'30" and only says, that you could chosse the access point and than "you can enter the code with help of the keys of the DGT 3000". But this is only mentioned not shown in the video.

To be honest, I doubt, that this will work flawlessly...

In my opinion, it would be acceptable if you initially configure WiFi via Pi 2 with mouse, keyboard and monitor or via web access (if this could be possible).

[Shivkumar Shivaji]

We don't support this feature, so I don't know understand how it can currently work at all.

I will soon try to integrate with a wireless web way to enter this info.

Shiv

[Pablo2000]

That's right, of course, Shiv.

Here's the thing: the folks over at Topschach market their product as a 'specially modified' version of pico, and so can/could have other features that we don't have. That's why I got a bit testy earlier in the thread suggesting they could/should contribute to the repo.

However, from what I can glean from their distribution image, it's a vanilla 0.51 - no bells or whistles. In fact their default .ini file (remember this is sold on a Pi2 with stockfish as the standard engine) has no max_threads set, so it's only using a single core of the cpu, has speech disabled (ok, a choice there I suppose) and internet access disabled, although in the 'product tour' video they mention one of the major features is automatic updates, which of course won't. I suppose their image might have a number of customisations in the linux side of life, but the pico is standard, as far as I can see.

I get that some folks might want to buy a ready configured, turn on and play, pico setup. If that's really what they're selling, then all the best to them, but it's a little bold to present the product as a 'special' version of pico, and more that it can do things it just can't (WLAN from clock). Still I'm just an old stick in the mud I suppose. If their offering is basically a 'weve done the setup for you' package and nothing more, though, they may get a little shocked when the other project is ready for prime-time!


P

[Shivkumar Shivaji]

Personally, I am ok with modifications but it definitely makes sense for them to contribute those changes back to the community. I do understand your concern. Topshach should make their modifications available on request.

On this feature itself, I have posted on this forum a working implementation of wireless discovery on github - https://github.com/sabhiram/raspberry-wifi-conf that we can leverage.

It makes sense for the end user to be able to configure via a mobile device that has to join the wifi network of picochess just the first time.

Shiv

[Michael Cvachovec]

Hello Pablo,

according to the youtube video there have been three changes programmed into the image:

1. Automatic Bluetooth connection, no monitor or keyboard is needed anymore.
2. Semi Automatic WLAN with choosing the (Topschach called it Hotspot) Connection with the buttons of the dgt3000. (This was just spoken text, with no demonstration in the video)
3. the Webinterface updates the shown chessdatabase every day and writes it in the image; so it can be used even if there is no internet connection.

Here is the link to the altered image download http://www.topschach.de/picochess-version-sdimage-download-p-3363.html?osCsid=neagqvvv0pc5l9qjgd065cl6m2

Cheers
Michael

Am Montag, 30. November 2015 10:25:26 UTC+1 schrieb Pablo2000:

[Torben Østergreen-Johansen]

Hi Michael

Could you please explain how to "pull the master from github"?

Thanks and merry Christmas!

Regards
Torben

[Michael Cvachovec]

Hello Torben,
that´s pretty easy use the terminal or putty and simply type the following commands:

cd /opt/picochess
sudo git pull origin master

sudo pip3 install --upgrade -r requirements.txt

That´s all, merry christmas!
Michael

[Torben Østergreen-Johansen]

Hello Michael

Thanks a lot, I will try this ASAP :-)

Torben

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[Torben Østergreen-Johansen]

Hello again, Michael

Sorry for my lack of knowledge in this matter, but could you please tell me what I should burn to the SD-card before I pull the master?

Regards

Torben

[Torben Østergreen-Johansen]

Well, I took my chances and pulled the master to a fully updated and working copy of picochess 0.51.

Luckily picochess 0.56 booted shortly after :-)

Having played a couple of games with different time settings and different level settings it seems to be working fine.

However, picochess "freezes" every time I try to switch the engine on the DGT 3000 clock. I can go up and down in the engine list, but when I press the third button in order to choose the engine nothing happens, and I have to restart picochess. Picohess then boots with the standard engine (stockfish).

Any suggestions?

I would like to try scid vs. PC, but this application does not seem to be included in the latest master (0.56) as far as I can tell. I guess it is possible to install this application via the pi terminal?

Regards

Torben

[DJ Dekker]

The engines probably don't work because the libraries they need are not on the disk image. These are other libraries than the ones mentioned in /opt/picochess/requirements.txt.

I prepared a disk image of PicoChess v0.55 that includes the necessary libraries (and also Scid vs. PC 4.14). You're welcome to try this image. If PicoChess does not start, then please use git to install PicoChess v0.56, and pip3 to get the libraries that are mentioned in requirements.txt. If Bluetooth doesn't connect, then please check /etc/bluetooth/rfcomm.conf.

The image is available at https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B9qWkOu8LbC8SlpOdTlneWpObk0

Scid vs. PC is not included on the standard PicoChess images at dl.picochess.org. With some effort, you can compile the current version 4.15 yourself from source. Perhaps it can be installed with sudo apt-get install scid, but I'm not sure about that.

[Michael Cvachovec]

Hi Torben,
after the automatic update to version 0.51 I do:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

Then you should have the missing liberies, now you are able to pull the latest master.

But I really like djdekkers Image where you already can find scid vs pc.
Cheers Michael

[Torben Østergreen-Johansen]

Hi DJ

Thanks for your response. I would very much like to try your image, so I have copied your 0.55 image (4.661.248 KB unpacked) to a 8 GB SD-card, but the pi freezes during the boot process. Therefore I can not update your image as you suggest. I have attached a photo of the error during the boot process.

What am I doing wrong?

Regards

Torben

[Torben Østergreen-Johansen]

Whoops, I forgot to attach the photo...

[Torben Østergreen-Johansen]

Whoops, I forgot to attach the photo...

Den mandag den 28. december 2015 kl. 19.09.49 UTC+1 skrev Torben Østergreen-Johansen:

[DJ Dekker]

The image expands to 16 GB. It will not fit on a 8 GB card. I still have to find out how to compress the partition on my RPi2 before creating a disk image, sorry...

[Torben Østergreen-Johansen]

Oh, thanks!

I have now copied your image to a 16 GB SD-card. Picochess seems to boot, but there is no communication between picochess and the DGT board/clock. I have made changes in the bluetooth conf file with no success.

I then tried to run "sudo apt-get update", but got the error shown in the attached photo. Because of this error, I am not able to run "sudo apt-get upgrade". 

Should I try to correct this (if yes, how?), or should I ignore the error and just pull the latest master from github + pip3?

Regards

Torben

[Torben Østergreen-Johansen]

Correction: It is a 32 GB SD-card.

[Torben Østergreen-Johansen]

Hi Michael

Thanks for your suggestion.

I have now followed your instructions, but the problem remains the same: The DGT clock and picochess freezes, when I try to switch engine.

I really do not know how to solve this...

Regards

Torben

[DJ Dekker]

Good that the system is booting now.

Did you try to connect to the DGT board using Bluetooth Manager? To do this, log in with username "pi" and password "picochess" and type "startx" at the command prompt. You'll find Bluetooth Manager in the menu (BTW, you will also find Scid vs. PC there). Don't forget to set a serial connection and to mark the board as a trusted device. Reboot the Pi and the connection should now be made automatically.

Next, you should update PicoChess to the latest version using git, and update the libraries with pip3.

I haven't come across the problem with /var/lib/dpkg/status before. It should not interfere with PicoChess, but it needs solving for future updates of your system. I won't have access to my Pi for this week, so can't look at the offending file. From your screenshot it appears that there is some parsing error, so probably a misplaced colon or something like that. You can open the offending file and see if you find anything like that. Otherwise, you can restore a backup of this file from /var/backups and apt-get should be working again.

[Michael Cvachovec]

Hi Torben,
looking at your picture, it seems that you typed sudo apt get instead of sudo apt-get.
I suggest you try it again.
Michael

[Torben Østergreen-Johansen]

Hi Michael

Thanks, but unfortunately is was not quite that easy to solve.

Having searched the internet for a solution, I found this page descriping my problem:

https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=11824

Luckily, I could solve the problem (a corrupted file) by typing:

sudo rm /var/lib/dpkg/status

sudo touch /var/lib/dpkg/status

Now I was able to run

sudu apt-get update

sudo apt-get upgrade

with no errors.

Following your suggestion I then typed

cd /opt/picochess

sudo git pull origin master

sudo pip3 install --upgrade -r requirements.txt

All seemed to go according to plan and picochess booted...but was unable to establish the bluetooth connection.

Therefore, I started the GUI, opened Bluetooth Manager and added the DGT board as a trusted device (password 0000 and serial connection). I could then see that my pi and my board connected.

However, picochess fails to establish the bluetooth connection when I reboot the pi. I even made sure that my board is identified correctly in the bluetooth configuration file (/etc/bluetooth/rfcomm.conf).

In an earlier post you wrote that you also had a lot of trouble with the bluetooth connection. How did you solve this?

Regards

Torben

--

[Torben Østergreen-Johansen]

Hi DJ

Thanks, but I already did all the things that you suggest (please see my new post to Michael).

It seems I only need to solve the problem with the bluetooth connection.

Is this a known issue with your image?

Thanks for all your help :-)

Regards

Torben

[DJ Dekker]

Hi Torben,

Perhaps you have got more than one Bluetooth device in the /dev directory? I remember having had /dev/rfcomm0 and /dev/rfcomm1 (instead of only /dev/rfcomm0) some time ago, which prevented the board from autoconnecting. I removed both devices manually (sudo rm /dev/rfcomm0 and sudo rm /dev/rfcomm1 -- don't worry about deleting them, a new device will be created), rebooted and reconnected with Bluetooth Manager, and the automatic connection was restored.

Greetings,
DJ

[Torben Østergreen-Johansen]

Hi DJ

I just checked, but I only found rfcomm0 in the /dev directory. I did delete it and then recreated it in Bluetooth Manager, but the board still does not autoconnect when I boot my pi.

However, I did notice that pairing the board and the pi in Bluetooth Manager is acknowledged with this message: "Serial port connected to /dev/rfcomm1". This surprised me, since - as I just mentioned above - I am not able to find such a file in the /dev directory.

Still I do not think this is the cause of all the troubles, since I have a working 0.56 image (created from 0.51 by pulling the master from github and installing pip3) which also pairs with my pi via rfcomm1. This image autoconnects with my board without problems (but freezes when I try to change the engine from the engine list).

Greetings

Torben 

[DJ Dekker]

Hmm, this is quite remarkable. Does it help if you specify dgt-port = /dev/rfcomm1 in picochess.ini?

[Shivkumar Shivaji]

There is a Bluetooth problem with some of the linux kernels on saving the binding. You might be running into it.

I will take a look at this image and comment more. I think I have found a base image with working Bluetooth. Will test and upload my current version soon given all the recent interest.

Shiv

On Dec 29, 2015 10:45 AM, "DJ Dekker" <chess19...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hmm, this is quite remarkable. Does it help if you specify dgt-port = /dev/rfcomm1 in picochess.ini?
>

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[Torben Østergreen-Johansen]

Yes, I have finally realised that this is a really tough nut to crack and certainly out of reach for a newbie like me. It seems to be some system related error.

Unfortunately it also did not help to specify the dgt-port in the /dev directory as you suggested.

I guess I will just have to wait until a new and stable image is released.

Greetings

Torben

[Torben Østergreen-Johansen]

Hi Shiv

Yes, there really seems to be a serious problem saving the bluetooth binding.

I am certainly not qualified to correct this problem myself, since the Pi is my first Linux computer ever. I bought it a few weeks ago solely for the purpose of running picochess.

It would be really nice if you could release a new and stable version of this great software, hopefully with the possibility to choose between different engines (like the Gavon chess project).

Thanks a lot for your effort!

Greetings

Torben

[Michael Cvachovec]

Hey Torben,

try to get to know if your 0.56 Version is working, use an usb connection to make sure. If you get the message on the clocks display your installation should be fine.
That´s what I did when I had the bluetooth errors:
Usb testing, OK -> Reboot->

sudo apt-get install bluez-utils (Complete reinstall of the utils)
reboot->
startx -> start a trusted bluetooth Connection with your board ->
Reboot
On the next start everthing should be fine.
Hope it helps
Michael

[Torben Østergreen-Johansen]

Hi Michael

I have now reinstalled the bluez-utils, but now I get an error during boot (something about GLIBC 2.16 not found). I also can not start the GUI because of some  GLIBC 2.15 errors).

I am giving up for now and will wait and hope for a new and stable version.

Thanks for all your efforts to help!

Greetings

Torben

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[Michael Cvachovec]

Last Try!

Just a missing libery, use:

sudo apt-get install bluez && sudo apt-get install bluez-utils

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[Torben Østergreen-Johansen]

Thanks, but it seems I am out of luck. Both commands result in an error (see the attached photo).

Greetings

Torben

[DJ Dekker]

Hi Torben,

I'm sorry to read that the image is still not working for you. Two suggestions in case you might want to give it a final try. ;)

1) My RPi2 has a USB Bluetooth adapter connected which needed particular firmware. This firmware was not on the original PicoChess image by Jonas, so I added it according to the instructions on the website below. Perhaps removing the firmware might help you?
http://plugable.com/2014/06/23/plugable-usb-bluetooth-adapter-solving-hfphsp-profile-issues-on-linux

2) I encountered the same problem as you when running Raspbian Jessie and Ubuntu 15.04 on my RPi2. Under these operating systems the Pi would only connect to the DGT board manually, never automatically at boot. It turned out that both Jessie and Ubuntu 15.04 use BlueZ 5, which changed the way in which Bluetooth serial devices get connected to the computer. Raspbian Wheezy, on the other hand, has the "old" BlueZ 4, which has always worked fine for PicoChess. Could it perhaps be the case that you somehow updated your BlueZ 4 to version 5, thus breaking autoconnection? This could have happened when /etc/apt/sources.list mentions "jessie" instead of "wheezy".

Greetings,
DJ

[Torben Østergreen-Johansen]

Hi DJ

Thanks for your continued support :-)

I'll answer in opposite order:

2) I just checked the list file, and only "wheezy" is mentioned, so no problem there.

1) Yes, this might actually be the problem for me, since Jonas' image is working properly on my Pi (autoconnecting on every boot). Unfortunately I have messed up your 0.55 image pretty badly trying to correct the bluetooth problem, so I will have to start all over. I will probably give it a shot soon :-)

Greetings

Torben

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[Torben Østergreen-Johansen]

Hello again DJ and happy new year!

I have now reinstalled your 0.55 image and deleted the firmware files you mentioned in your last post. Unfortunately my Pi and the DGT board still does not autoconnect.

More specifically I have deleted two files:

in the /home/pi directory:

sudo rm fw-0a5c_21e8.hcd

and in the /lib/firmware/brcm directory:

sudo rm BC20702A0-0a5c-21e8.hcd

I do not know if I should delete more files and/or make other changes, since I do not know which changes you have made to Jonas' image (both 0.45 and the automatically updated 0.51 is autoconnecting on my system without problems - but with only the stockfish engine installed).

Greetings

Torben

[Shivkumar Shivaji]

Fyi, i have an image almost ready except for the Bluetooth auto detection, trying to see if I can get that done before uploading..

Shiv

--

[Torben Østergreen-Johansen]

Hi Shiv 

This is very good news, thanks!

I am really looking forward to your new image, hoping that the bluetooth autoconnection and engine switch is working.

Greetings

Torben

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