Picochess for Windows can be tested - Who will be the first to run it on Windows or MAC?

[Johan Sjöblom]

Hello brave testers.

Who wants to be the first to test PicoChess on Windows?

The Windows installer is ready for some brave real-world testing. If you have a 64-bit Windows 10 or 11 PC, download the installer from:

https://github.com/JohanSjoblom/picochess/releases/download/v4.3.5/PicoChessInstaller.zip

Unzip it and run PicoChessInstaller.exe. If you prefer to build it yourself, check out the 471-port-to-windows branch and run win/build-dist.ps1. The installer will appear in sdist.

The web setup has been tested, but there is still plenty to try. Let me know what works, what breaks, and which Windows version and board or engine you used.

If you use the installer you will get a stockfish engine only, enough to test. I added my Fritz 19 and I was able to play Fritz using my DGT eboard and my Windows PC.

Who’s first? 🙂

mvh Johan

PS. You can also use MAC, but you have to build the installer yourself by cloning the repository mentioned above and running mac/build-dist-mac.sh and the installer should be built into the sdist folder, just like on Windows. I do not have any MAC hardware (running MAC os) so I cannot test this myself.

[Johan Sjöblom]

The windows and mac port is now in master branch, so if you want to build the installers yourself simply clone the repository. No need to use any special branch. Mac still has no stockfish resource file.

[Johan Sjöblom]

Now the MAC install script now downloads a minimum engines.ini, and a-stockf.uci file, and it also downloads the latest stockfish MAC build.

That means that the MAC installer is now on the same level as the windows installer... It should be possible to test the installation with the downloaded stockfish.

// Johan

[Johan Sjöblom]

OK, we have a first one to run it on MAC, and I have run it on Windows. So porting is pretty far!

Its not going to be easy to connect just any eboard on MAC or Windows, but we can perhaps learn how to do that.

The setting dgt-port in picochess.ini seems to be only for the DGT eboard.

// Johan

[Andrea Gatti]

Hello Johan,

I'm resuming my test sessions of Picochess, so I will be testing the windows version pretty soon.

Cheers

Andrea

[Johan Sjöblom]

The uci files in windows are currently really simple…

If you test, could you also write a small howto on how to add Fritz as a local engine. It needs an uci file and an entry in the engines.ini… I think many would like to test that.

// Johan

[Johan Sjöblom]

If you want to test an AI interface instead of the web client on Windows you can now do it. This is very technical.

I did the first absolutely mini-mini-version of a MCP interface. You can only play "blind games" against picochess now from your AI.

Its the branch 488-mcp-test. This is a bit on the futuristic side of things, but one day this will be the main interface for everyone instead of the web client.

I can only recommend you test this if you have Claude Code as a CLI. But I will make it work with Chatgpt as well.

I can ask my Claude to play against Picochess (Stockfish)... I am pretty sure he will lose. But its a little bit futuristic to watch them play. I stopped them at 5 moves, I was just testing.

// Johan

[Santiago Torres]

Hi Johan, I have tested a bit, and it does not work with ichessone and chessnut eboards using usb.  The engine was stockfish 19, on my last version windows 11 surface 6 laptop.  Without eboard most of things are working even though I have not tested thoroughly.

I look forward any advice.

Best regards,

Santiago

[Johan Sjöblom]

Hi Santiago,

Thanks for testing. I checked the PicoChess code more closely.

The iChessOne hardware can communicate over USB on Windows, where it appears as a serial COM port. However, PicoChess currently has no USB implementation for iChessOne. It only supports the board through Bluetooth LE using the bluepy library.

bluepy is not available for Windows. This means that eboards which currently depend on bluepy, including iChessOne and Chessnut, cannot be used with PicoChess on Windows at the moment.

The JSON files for these boards only store Bluetooth connection information. They do not configure a USB port.

So this is a current PicoChess limitation, not a problem with your setup or Stockfish. USB support for iChessOne should be technically possible, but it still needs to be implemented.

Best regards,

Johan