Chessnut Air Review

Go to the Chessnut app & download your games if it keeps flashing yellow or push the reset with a paper clip , after that try using the ChessConnect should work .

Thanks both of you! The paperclip thing didn't work by itself. I first had to leave it connected to the Chessnut App on the Mac overnight until all the "positions" flushed out of the system. Then it wasn't flashing randomly on the side of the board when I connected again.

After that, it was just a matter of connecting to app again, hitting "Chess game save: 20 games," "Import New Game," then batch, select all and delete. I can now play again!

You still need to use the chessnut app from time to time to clear out games ? should only take around 5 mins to clear the memory ? Which also stops the flashing of the yellow light .

Yeah, I wasn't clear. The flashing yellow light was there of course, but when I connected the board to the computer via the App, random positions were flashing in the rightmost 2-3 columns of the board (e.g. I could not start a game because it was flashing random "pieces missing" on the side of the board). This effectively locked me out from using the app to download and delete the saved games.
I'm pretty sure that somehow I got Chessconnect in a bad state where it was thinking the random games showing on the lichess home page were my games so it was trying to load those positions. The reason it was only the rightmost 2-3 columns had something to do an overlay blocking some of the board so only ranks a-c were showing (black was on the bottom of most of the flashing positions). I think it must have queued in so many I needed a few hours for it to flush it out and let me use the app normally.
I imagine if I use it to record OTB games, then I'll be limited to 20 before I have to go through the download procedure. Android users have a PGN download app that us iOS/Mac people don't have, but it's only for OTB games as the rest would be stored on Chessnut/Chess.com/Lichess's cloud database IIRC.

My set is all finished - sensors, felted, works just fine. I am still looking into maybe making a set with beige or ivory pieces instead of the stark white, but this is pretty good for now. I wasn’t able to get the thicker felt to consistently work, but I think the pieces felt too “spongey” with it anyway because they are small. I used the 0.5 mm velvet type. With nothing but BlueTac I was able to get the set to weigh the same as the Air set, 237 g. This is more than the Air+ set, which is only 212 g. Ideally maybe I’d add a bit of weight, but I’m not really sure, because the balance on these is good - they are pretty bottom heavy as is. 
I had a weird issue with my board and some additional sensors that I’m still ironing out but customer service has been responsive. I need to check one more thing when I get home tonight, but hopefully all is good now.

Looks great @mvk20 - well done.

Nice color contrast compared to the chessboard.

I passed up on this tablet version. So many great chess products came out at the same time.

I have most of them, 7 total with the Chessup 2 pledged which will give me 8 total (plus an unopened, extra SquareOff Pro in the closet). If you passed on the Chessnut Evo, you passed up on a great product. It is, in my opinion (and others), the Gold Standard currently of e-boards.

Which e-boards do you currently own?

Yes look nice , Way better than the set from chessnut air ,  mvk20

@mvk20

Wow, the Dubrovnik 1950 chess set, B. Fischer's favorite, an immortal design, the most elegant one. That's just fabulous !!!

Hello there, just discovered the Chessnut after seeing an ad for the chessup 2 during the candidates stream. I ended up backing the Chessup 2 on kickstarter but someone mentioned Chessnut and after reading and seeing some videos I ordered a Air+, knowing what's out there I can't wait until (hopefully ) November before the Chessup 2 is shipped.

I'm eagerly awaiting delivery of the Chestnut Air+ because it promises everthing I originally wanted from my gorgeous DGT Rosewood bluetooth board I bought a few years ago but never got working reliable, gorgeous board and pieces but terrible software.

I was looking on the chessnut facebook page and saw some photos from the Hong Kong Expo. But look at this picture:

Look there at the back,... Is that a prototype with self moving pieces? 😁

Cool!

In my private correspondence with Chessnut, they'd mentioned that they were working on a board with self-moving pieces. Seems like that's the case!

With the tilting board, it looks like they've got a magnetic travel set, the "Chessnut Go" near production as well!

I'd be really interested to see the self-moving pieces and am hopeful that Chessnut managed to crack the engineering. That said, there are a lot of barriers. If the movement of the pieces is too slow, it'll interrupt the flow of the game. If the movement pieces is fast, it's likely that the mechanism will be unreliable.

First, thanks Vitualis for your YT videos, they helped me decide to buy the Air+.

Yes, self moving pieces are great in theory but nobody has for now cracked the combination fast, reliable with good functioning software making blitz and bullet without increment possible. There was that scam a few years back that looked promising but unfortunately it was fake.

If a manufacturer gets it just right I will sell my kidney to get my hands on one 😅

Confirmation!!! 😁

Yeah, but the piece movement has to be very fast.

A Rook moving g1xg7 is a loooong way across the board for all the current devices that have videos.

Then moving the captured piece off the board is another long journey. How they handle that will determine the success of the board. And how it handles all of it.

For example, how are they going to handle

1. Rg1xg7 then you quickly move Rb8 (is that allowed and does that get transmitted immediately to your online opponent?) If it does ....

2. Qc1 (does that piece start to move if the original piece movement and captured piece movement is still happening?)

If it does not whose time is affected?

This is what they need to show us. I am with Lourens in the screenshot - if it works properly, take my money now.

Cool picture. the photo shows the comparison in size of the EVO with their larger Pro wooden board. 
If that’s chessnut’s prototype for the robotic board, the design of the wood-looking pieces look slim and tall. Reminded me of the reasons from another thread here on chesscom.

https://www.chess.com/forum/view/chess-equipment/making-my-automatic-chessboard?page=4#comment-101456745

Yeah, don't think there is any way around that. Still not fully enamored with "self-moving" chess pieces/boards though.

As my wife's uncle used to always say about electrical stuff on cars - "All those gadgets just means there is more to break." He bought and drove cars that were all manual (windows, door locks, seats, etc) until the day he died about 5 years ago.

Truth. 
I’ve heard of the mechanical issues from owners of the MB/Fidelity Phantom, Excalibur Mirage and Novag 2robot and Adversary. 
Still hard to ignore for those who like the novelty.

Exactly. I have several things that were purchased as "novelties" which means I will likely buy a moving chess set for that same reason ...