Picochess as a UCI bridge for your favorite chess program?
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Johan Sjöblom
May 21, 2026, 2:13:41 PM (11 days ago) May 21
to PicoChess
Hi all
The external chess program would still do what it is good at: storing games, showing notation, managing PGNs, replaying games, databases, analysis windows, and so on.
Picochess would do what it is good at: selecting and configuring engines, including retro engines and MAME-based engines.
In the first simple version, the external chess program would not configure the engine directly. Any setoption commands from the external program would just be ignored. Engine settings would still be managed the normal Picochess way, using picochess.ini and the existing .uci files.
The external program would send positions and search commands to Picochess. Picochess would pass those to the selected engine and send back the best move. If the selected engine provides analysis information, Picochess could also send that back. If the engine is a retro engine that only gives moves and not detailed analysis, then the bridge would simply return moves.
The main benefit is that other chess programs could gain access to Picochess’s engine collection, especially the retro/MAME engines, without needing to know how to configure or run them.
The first version would be intentionally simple:
The external GUI sends a board position.
Picochess asks the configured engine for a move.
Picochess sends the move back.
Engine options stay controlled by Picochess.
PGN storage and notation stay controlled by the external GUI.
This would make Picochess act like a “meta-engine”: not really a chess engine itself, but a UCI-compatible wrapper around the engines Picochess already knows how to manage.
By adding a small windows uci proxy we could use Fritz on a Windows machine and the uci proxy would send the uci communication to the raspberry Pi where you can chose your favorite engine...
-- Johan
Hold on to your hats. I have an idea that might sound crazy at first:
Use Picochess as an UCI Bridge.
You could use any chess program that can handle uci engines and let Picochess act as the engine manager for you favorite chess program, like Fritz or Lukas chess, etc...
More in detail:
Picochess is very good at managing chess engines. It can handle many normal UCI engines, remote engines, and especially retro chess computers through the MAME system. But Picochess is not mainly a chess database or PGN library program.
The idea is to let another chess program use Picochess as if Picochess itself were a UCI chess engine.
So the setup would look like this:
Chess GUI / database program
talks UCI to
Picochess bridge
uses
The engine already selected and configured in Picochess
Picochess is very good at managing chess engines. It can handle many normal UCI engines, remote engines, and especially retro chess computers through the MAME system. But Picochess is not mainly a chess database or PGN library program.
The idea is to let another chess program use Picochess as if Picochess itself were a UCI chess engine.
So the setup would look like this:
Chess GUI / database program
talks UCI to
Picochess bridge
uses
The engine already selected and configured in Picochess
The external chess program would still do what it is good at: storing games, showing notation, managing PGNs, replaying games, databases, analysis windows, and so on.
Picochess would do what it is good at: selecting and configuring engines, including retro engines and MAME-based engines.
In the first simple version, the external chess program would not configure the engine directly. Any setoption commands from the external program would just be ignored. Engine settings would still be managed the normal Picochess way, using picochess.ini and the existing .uci files.
The external program would send positions and search commands to Picochess. Picochess would pass those to the selected engine and send back the best move. If the selected engine provides analysis information, Picochess could also send that back. If the engine is a retro engine that only gives moves and not detailed analysis, then the bridge would simply return moves.
The main benefit is that other chess programs could gain access to Picochess’s engine collection, especially the retro/MAME engines, without needing to know how to configure or run them.
The first version would be intentionally simple:
The external GUI sends a board position.
Picochess asks the configured engine for a move.
Picochess sends the move back.
Engine options stay controlled by Picochess.
PGN storage and notation stay controlled by the external GUI.
This would make Picochess act like a “meta-engine”: not really a chess engine itself, but a UCI-compatible wrapper around the engines Picochess already knows how to manage.
By adding a small windows uci proxy we could use Fritz on a Windows machine and the uci proxy would send the uci communication to the raspberry Pi where you can chose your favorite engine...
-- Johan
Luigi Vogliobene
May 22, 2026, 5:27:55 AM (11 days ago) May 22
to PicoChess
It would be wonderful, Johan!
my 2 cents
my 2 cents
Luigi
MartinP
May 22, 2026, 7:05:46 AM (11 days ago) May 22
to PicoChess
To my ears, this all sounds like Klingon. I know far more about baking pizza than I do about chess programming.
But—isn't the whole point of Picochess to be a chess program that runs on a portable Raspberry Pi and is compatible with several popular digital chessboards? Originally, it was designed to display moves directly on a DGT clock, without any web connectivity.
I think it is fantastic how much this project has evolved and innovated; however, for me personally, the motto remains: the smaller, the better.
My setup looks like this: a Millennium board (or DGT board), a Raspberry Pi 5 with a compatible battery setup for portable use, and a small 7-inch monitor for control purposes.
Connecting it to a laptop running Fritz software on Windows would surely be making a mountain out of a molehill—wouldn't it?
As an end user, two things are important to me:
1. Retro engines—finally getting to play against a chess computer that I could never afford back in the eighties.
2. A strong—yet highly adaptive—chess engine that adjusts to my playing strength and helps me improve my chess skills. Ideally, one with a human-like playing style.
Currently, the program automatically emails all the games I play to my Outlook, saving them in a dedicated "Chess" folder. I then open these games in Fritz (or ChessBase) and analyze them on my high-performance desktop computer.
Greetings
But—isn't the whole point of Picochess to be a chess program that runs on a portable Raspberry Pi and is compatible with several popular digital chessboards? Originally, it was designed to display moves directly on a DGT clock, without any web connectivity.
I think it is fantastic how much this project has evolved and innovated; however, for me personally, the motto remains: the smaller, the better.
My setup looks like this: a Millennium board (or DGT board), a Raspberry Pi 5 with a compatible battery setup for portable use, and a small 7-inch monitor for control purposes.
Connecting it to a laptop running Fritz software on Windows would surely be making a mountain out of a molehill—wouldn't it?
As an end user, two things are important to me:
1. Retro engines—finally getting to play against a chess computer that I could never afford back in the eighties.
2. A strong—yet highly adaptive—chess engine that adjusts to my playing strength and helps me improve my chess skills. Ideally, one with a human-like playing style.
Currently, the program automatically emails all the games I play to my Outlook, saving them in a dedicated "Chess" folder. I then open these games in Fritz (or ChessBase) and analyze them on my high-performance desktop computer.
Greetings
Johan Sjöblom
May 22, 2026, 9:47:41 AM (10 days ago) May 22
to PicoChess
Good point. I also played back in the 80s (only) and now I can play all those engines that I could not afford either, so for sure I recognize your points. And yes it should be kept small and minimum.
Klingon or not, a change like this would not change the picochess user interface or the playing experience on the Raspberry Pi... It would just offer a connection that could be used by other chess programs. For clarity I might add that it would offer an "invisible" interface to other chess programs so those who use Picochess would never see anything different.... But you could connect a chess program to play against whatever retro engine you chose in Picochess, so you could play with Fritz against those 80s chess engines...
Be how it may, this is just a future idea, but its certainly implementable. For now I will focus on fixing the master code so that Picochess does what its best at... and focus on that.
-- Johan
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