Picochess not working - any version!

[Torben Østergreen-Johansen]

Hello!

I have just bought a Raspberry Pi 2B, a DGT Bluetooth chess board and a DGT 3000 chess clock.

I was able to play just one game against picochess 0.45 with no problems. Then I installed the Bluetooth drivers om my PC (Windows 10). In Windows all went fine and I was able to play on the board via Bluetooth.

However, since then I have been unable to get picochess to work again! I even reinstalled a fresh 0.45 image on the SD-card and shut down my PC before rebooting the Pi, but it did not help. I have also tried other images, i.e. 0.51 (from topschach.de), 0.55, but no images seem to work on my Pi.

When I boot into the GUI with startx and go to Bluetooth Manager (having run sudo apt-get install bluez-utils blueman) I am not able to run the manager. After a few seconds the Bluetooth Manager shuts down. Therefore I can not connect to the DGT board through the Bluetooth Manager.

Any help will be greatly appreciated!

Regards
Torben

[Shivkumar Shivaji]

You cant have 2 connections to the DGT board (via windows and via Pi). Can you verify that the USB connection works from the PI?

Torben

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[Torben Østergreen-Johansen]

Hi and thanks for your very fast response!

I think my USB connection is working fine for the Pi since I can use the USB keyboard and USB mouse.

Maybe this screen shot from my boot sequence on the Pi shows what is wrong? 

Regards

Torben

[Torben Østergreen-Johansen]

Sorry for my complete lack of knowledge in this matter. You probably wanted me to test the USB connection via cable, which I have just tried.

I seems the USB connection via USB cable between the Pi and the DGT board is NOT working :-(

The board is blinking red-green and picochess does not start.

I have attached a photo of the USB boot process.

Regards

Torben

Den søndag den 6. december 2015 kl. 23.02.39 UTC+1 skrev Torben Østergreen-Johansen:

Hi and thanks for your very fast response!

I think my USB connection is working fine for the Pi since I can use the USB keyboard and USB mouse.

Maybe this screen shot from my boot sequence on the Pi shows what is wrong? 

Regards

Torben

Den søndag den 6. december 2015 kl. 22.14.01 UTC+1 skrev sshivaji:

[Shivkumar Shivaji]

Its not the USB connection, its the USB serial connection that is not working for some reason. If you have the log file, great, if not, try to disconnect your windows bluetooth connection from the DGT board first and then retry.

Shiv

[Torben Østergreen-Johansen]

Hi Shiv

Thanks a lot for trying to help me out.

I do not know where to find the log file (I presume you mean the Pi log file).

However, according to your suggestion I have disconnected my windows bluetooth connection from the DGT board, but this does not help. Picochess will still not boot, neither via serial USB or via bluetooth.

I am completely puzzled as to why picochess does not boot anymore, even though I have put the original and stable 0.45 image on the SD card.

What can have changed? Maybe the DGT board stores information about my Windows setup? Is this possible and will it block picochess from booting?

Regards

Torben

[Torben Østergreen-Johansen]

Hi again

I am now finally able to boot picochess via the USB serial cable! 

I had a lot of problems with the USB connection due to a driver failure, but having messed around with the drivers and rebooted several times, it now works fine :-)

Picochess has automatically updated from version 0.45 to 0.51.

Now I only need to establish the link between picochess and my DGT board via bluetooth! For some reason this still does not work. My bluetooth connection to the DGT board works fine in Windows. I have also tried to disconnect my Windows bluetooth connection to the DGT board, but picochess is still not able to connect to the DGT board via bluetooth.

Any suggestions, please?

Regards

Torben

Den mandag den 7. december 2015 kl. 01.32.07 UTC+1 skrev sshivaji:

[DJ Dekker]

Hi Torben,

Could you try to establish a Bluetooth connection manually using Bluetooth Manager (if it still crashes, try to reinstall bluetooth bluez-utils blueman using apt-get)? In my case, I need to connect with Bluetooth Manager and mark the DGT Board as trusted once and it will connect automatically after every subsequent bootup.

Please make sure to disconnect the USB cable before trying to connect with Bluetooth.

DJ

[Torben Østergreen-Johansen]

Hi DJ

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction.

It did not help to reinstall the bluetooth packages. But your suggestion made it clear to me that my real problem was that I was not able to connect the Pi and the DGT board via the bluetooth manager (it crashed every time I tried to open the program).

Searching the internet for a solution I finally found the problem and the solution! It seems to be relatively well known that the Raspian Wheezy has an error, which does not allow the user to open the bluetooth manager because the username (in my case just "pi") needs to be written into one of the system files.

I found this easy solution: At the terminal promt type "sudo usermod -G bluetooth -a pi" (the last word being my username).

Now I was finally able to start the bluetooth manager in the GUI and then pair my Pi with the DGT board :-)

So far so good! I can now play picochess on the DGT board via bluetooth connection.

However, the DGT 3000 clock does not seem to work properly. It always starts with 5 minutes no matter which time setting I chose using the extra white queen, and the clock does not count down when I play. This means that both sides are shown as having 5 minutes left throughout the game.

Also I lose contact to picochess if I press the rightmost clockbutton several times. I then have to restart the Pi :-(

Any suggestions how to fix these problems?

Thanks!

Regards

Torben

[Michael Cvachovec]

Hi Torben,

before starting picochess make sure to set the clock option to 25, and confirm it with the rightmost button. In the display the number 25 should stop blinking. Then start picochess, when receiving the booting message in the clocks display, wait a little (1-2 minutes) before using the clock menu.
At least this worked out for me

Michael

[Torben Østergreen-Johansen]

Hi Michael

Thanks a lot, it now works! 

It has been a long and bumpy ride getting to this point, since I am completety new to the Pi and Linux.

Therefore, I am considering writing a guide for newbies like myself with a detailed description of how to set up picochess on a bluetooth DGT board with the DGT 3000 clock connected and with wireless access to the internet. It is not enough to follow the picochess installation guide.

I am very thankful for the help I have recieved in this group.

Regards

Torben

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[DJ Dekker]

Hi Torben,

Therefore, I am considering writing a guide for newbies like myself with a detailed description of how to set up picochess on a bluetooth DGT board with the DGT 3000 clock connected and with wireless access to the internet. It is not enough to follow the picochess installation guide.

I wrote something like that a while ago: Setting Up Picochess With a DGT Board. The page deals with installing PicoChess (v0.33) and needs some updating, especially since the libraries have been removed from the /opt/picochess folder.

Greetings,

DJ

[Shivkumar Shivaji]

If there is an updated version of this page, we can add it to official docs. A pull request to the docs folder also does the trick. However, if it is hard, just point me to the latest update and I can enter it manually.

Thanks!, Shiv

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[Torben Østergreen-Johansen]

Hi DJ

Woau, that is an excellent guide!

I would have saved a couple of days work and a lot of frustration, if I had been aware of your guide. 

In the end I have taken all the steps mentioned in your guide. The guide only needs a little bit of updating. The part about adding user permissions in order to allow access to the bluetooth manager is no longer accurate, see my former post - or read a more detailed description here: 

http://plugable.com/2015/05/11/quick-fix-for-problems-using-bluetooth-from-the-raspberry-pi-desktop

Maybe you would be so kind to update your guide? I really think it would be a great help to all newbies.

It seems Shiv would be happy too...the guide deserves to be added to the picochess docs :-)

Regards

Torben