Picochess V4.1.6 strange screen prob.

[Anastasios Polichronopoulos]

While I was testing the picochess V4.1.6 on a Pi4 with a 7" dsi screen I found something strange. While connected to a board via BLE and only if the analyze is on during a game in order to show the eval bar, while the engine is "thinking" the screen changes like the pic shows. The normal is the first one , and the second pic is the possessed one.

This is happening only if I am connected to a board and not during a web play and only if analyze is on.

Any ideas?

Tassos

[Antonio]

I don't have a 7-inch screen, but everything would point to the resolution, which I assume will be 1024x600 or 1024x800.   Can you test if the same thing happens without connecting the eboard? Could the fault be when connecting the evaluation bar?

[Anastasios Polichronopoulos]

Without connecting the e-board everything is normal. Also if the analyze is off and no eval bar is showing again everything is ok.

Only if analyze is on with the evaluation bar showing while connected to an e-board and only during the engines "thinking" time it happens.

Tassos  

[Johan Sjöblom]

Is there a difference if you use only one analysis line, or if you use the plus button to get, say 3 lines, of analysis.

And when the engine is thinking you would see the clock? Or are you using some other pico mode than Normal?

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[Antonio]

Could it be that the resolution is too low? 800x600??

[Anastasios Polichronopoulos]

I am using normal mode only , and I have checked only with one line (I will try with more).

The resolution is 1024x600.

Tassos

[Antonio]

If I give you the "web" directory, would you know how to change it to the one you have???

[Anastasios Polichronopoulos]

I can give it a try, just let me know what to change :)

[Antonio]

Recomiento WinSCP si está con windows.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WYOAWJuCeGdW1Xsdpxfy5LtrUS7uLl7t/view?usp=drive_link

[Johan Sjöblom]

I was able to repeat the problem on normal webplay (no eboard). I could not get your exact resolution but tested a few ones and when I chose 1024x768 (4:3) then I got the same problem.

[Antonio]

Now I don't get the error. I have uploaded it to my test branch Johan.

[Johan Sjöblom]

OK, I will test the Study-Position branch and see if the error is still there....

[Johan Sjöblom]

Yes, the problem for the 1024x768 (4:3) is solved. Did not test anything else.

[Johan Sjöblom]

If anyone wants to test Antonios branch you would need to do the following commands to get his test branch named Studio-Position:

> cd /opt/picochess

> git fetch origin

> git checkout -b Study-Position origin/Study-Position

Now your local git is on this branch. To get back to the pico master branch you need to do:

> git switch master

Now that you have both you can switch back and forth, here's how to go back to Study-Position

>git switch Study-Position

When you run install-picochess or update picochess from the menu the master branch will update to the latest as usual, but if you are on the Study-Position (or any other test branch) it will only update to the latest version of that branch.

To see your status I have made two small shell script utilities that are used by the System Information menu to show info inside Pico, but you can run them also as commands:

> ./check-git-status.sh   --> will display "git:" when you are on master branch, and "b:" if you are on a branch. And there will be a number if there are updates.

Last time you ran picochess-install can be seen by the command:

> ./check-update-status.sh

BR, Johan

[Johan Sjöblom]

Just for fun, the test game I tested above to check the screen problem was against LC0 "Mean Girl" and that personality sometimes makes huge mistakes... It let me do mate in a quite old-fashioned way with Queen to h7. Usually in fast test games I end up losing to most of the personalities. So this was a fun test!

[Event "PicoChess game"]
[Site "Vaasa"]
[Date "2025.10.28"]
[Round "?"]
[White "Johan"]
[Black "Lc0 v0.32.0 (01-Mean Girl)"]
[Result "1-0"]
[Time "19:23:04"]
[WhiteElo "1896"]
[BlackElo "3516"]
[PicoTimeControl "3 2"]
[PicoRemTimeW "91"]
[PicoRemTimeB "194"]
[PicoOpeningBook "books/i-gm1950.bin"]
[Opening "French: Tarrasch, Open, 4.c3"]
[ECO "C07b"]

1. e4 e6 2. d4 d5 3. Nd2 c5 4. c3 cxd4 5. cxd4 dxe4 6. Nxe4 Bb4+ 7. Nc3 Nc6 8.
Nf3 Nf6 9. Bb5 O-O 10. O-O Bd7 11. Bg5 Rc8 12. Rc1 h6 13. Be3 Ne7 14. Bd3 Bc6
15. Ne5 Bd6 16. Nxc6 Rxc6 17. Bb1 Rb6 18. Qc2 Qd7 19. Ne4 Nxe4 20. Qxe4 Rxb2
21. Qh7# 1-0

[Antonio]

a very obvious engine failure... but hey, double the joy. You win the test game and the error doesn't seem to appear! It just needs to be confirmed by someone with a 1024x600 tft screen.    Congratulations on your victory with a bad girl

[Johan Sjöblom]

The test game actually tells us a little bit more about the LC0 personalities... I have not tested these LC0 personalities enough, but my setting on node limit is quite high. This is from my uci file, and I was running on a Debian laptop so it had plenty of CPU power.

[01-Mean Girl]
WeightsFile = /opt/picochess/engines/lc0_weights/meangirl-8.pb.gz
Threads = 2
PolicyTemperature = 0.3
CPuct = 1.2
PicoNode = 10000

I think the explanation can be found when I list the lc0_weights files... The meangirl weight file is really small... its even smaller than the mini LD2. That must be the explanation for not playing so well. It seems meangirl and evilgirl has the smallest "brain" of them all :-)  ... Well we are on the learning path here, but the personalities are fun to play. Its not so serious... I dont think the classic2 and maia3 are making blunders like this...

/opt/picochess/engines/lc0_weights> ls -lS
total 615972
-rw-r--r-- 1 pi pi 170524829 Oct 25 09:23 classic2.pb.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 pi pi 170521553 Oct 25 09:23 maia3.pb.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 pi pi 112363913 Oct 25 09:23 classic1.pb.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 pi pi 101659153 Oct 25 09:23 maia-2500.pb.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 pi pi  20640654 Oct 25 09:23 goodgyal-7.pb.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 pi pi  18644442 Oct 25 09:23 792013-192x15.txt
-rw-r--r-- 1 pi pi   8921755 Oct 25 09:23 elite_v2.pb.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 pi pi   6521107 Oct 25 09:23 badgyal-8.pb.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 pi pi   6366549 Oct 25 09:23 LD2.pb.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 pi pi   1328977 Oct 25 09:23 maia-1400.pb.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 pi pi   1313870 Oct 25 09:23 maia-1600.pb.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 pi pi   1313415 Oct 25 09:23 maia-1700.pb.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 pi pi   1313193 Oct 25 09:23 maia-1100.pb.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 pi pi   1289431 Oct 25 09:23 maia-1800.pb.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 pi pi   1262607 Oct 25 09:23 maia-1900.pb.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 pi pi   1258199 Oct 25 09:23 maia-1500.pb.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 pi pi   1249692 Oct 25 09:23 maia-1200.pb.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 pi pi   1244431 Oct 25 09:23 maia-1300.pb.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 pi pi   1156609 Oct 25 09:23 maia-2200.pb.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 pi pi   1056477 Oct 25 09:23 evilgyal-6.pb.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 pi pi    746615 Oct 25 09:23 meangirl-8.pb.gz

[Anastasios Polichronopoulos]

Ok I can confirm that 1024x600 works fine, Thanks Antonio and Johan:)

Tassos

[Antonio]

Thanks to you for reporting the errors that Picochess may have. I'm glad it works for you!!   We keep learning!!

[Henri]

Hi there Antonio. Johan,

Updated from 4.1.3 to 4.1.6. No problem on a regular monitor, but on my 1024x600 7inch LCD display with  Pi4 attached I got a white screen with text 'Cannot connect to destination' (127.0.0.1)

Tried a fresh image (latest Randy picochess 4) but in that case there is not even a white screen, at the end of a long load I get the command line. Picochess is loaded though, I get a greeting sound.

In both cases I altered the /boot/firmware/config.txt as usual by adding

hdmi_force_edid_audio=1
max_usb_current=1
hdmi_force_hotplug=1
config_hdmi_boost=7
hdmi_group=2
hdmi_mode=87
hdmi_drive=2
display_rotate=0
hdmi_cvt 1024 600 60 6 0 0 0

and altering the line

'dtoverlar=vc4-kms-v3d' to

dtoverlar=vc4-fkms-v3d

This always did the trick and I never had a problem using the 7 inch display for picochess until now.

How do I get my desktop back?

Henri

Op dinsdag 28 oktober 2025 om 20:32:04 UTC+1 schreef Antonio:

[Johan Sjöblom]

Strange. First a question: Do you have 2 different Rasbperry PIs or did you connect the same PI to a regular monitor and to a 7 inch screen?

Are you running X11 windowing system? And how can we not get a connection to 127.0.0.1, that should not be possible, it would indicate som problem with the network setup.

In the case where you tried Randys V4 image: Can you open a web browser from another mobile, PI, or computer to that image? That would prove that its something with the display resolution.

The 4.1.6 does not yet have Antonios new support for 1024x 800-600. Its only in branch new-Study-Position. If you are able to checkout that branch and test it it would be great. If it works then we could merge that pull request (   https://github.com/JohanSjoblom/picochess/pull/134  ). We have to do some work to get that pull request rebased first, but that should not be a problem.

— Johan

[Antonio]

It wouldn't be a bad idea to start simplifying some branches...

[Johan Sjöblom]

Simplified! All open pull request branches have now been merged into master and Pico version 4.1.7 released. This new version should support the 1024-800 and 1024-600...

[Henri]

Hi Johan,

Updated to 4.1.7. and my 1024-600 seems to work fine now, thanks! One question for now, how to I change the number of lines of analysis from one to more on my touchscreen?

Henri

Op maandag 10 november 2025 om 07:39:59 UTC+1 schreef messi...@gmail.com:

[Antonio]

Thanks for your help with my part of the job... On touchscreens, only one thread is enabled; this is a programming setting implemented to prevent the Raspberry Pi from slowing down. You can access the web server from your mobile phone and add as many lines as you need. Regards

[Henri]

Nice Antonio! But a button would be nice to enable synchronisation of the game-position. When I start a browser and enter the IP-address I get the start position of the game for a period beforing it suddenly synchronises.... ;)

Henri

Op maandag 10 november 2025 om 12:52:51 UTC+1 schreef Antonio: