So I just got the ChessUp2. It came in a great box, and packaging. The pieces feel great. The board was about the size I expected. After setting up the peices, the board felt a bit smaller, perhaps because the base of the peices covers more of the square than I am used to on my giant board. However, after playing a few games, it seems fine. Piece detection is really cool and I think there is a ton of potential here! The bag feels very nice!
Onto the games and a bunch of questions.
-
Lichess doesn’t seem ready yet? – First thing I tried was playing on Lichess. Maybe this was a mistake. I loaded up the phone, clicked the Lichess App and it told me my op[ponent was my son’s account? He wasn’t online, very weird. After making the first move, its like the app had am ind of its own and was making invalid moves and just didn’t really work. I assume this is just ChessUp1 app with new board doesn’t really work that well together?
-
Next thing I tried was Chess.com integration. This worked great! It found an online game pretty quickly. I quickly found games without an increment are quite hard as your timer counts for moving their pieces as well as yours (which is to be expected). So I stuck with 10|5 games which was very nice and relaxing. Lights for my moves were not too distracting. I lost all my games, lol. One thing I was trying to do was open the app to get to a chat window and wish the person good luck or something, but I couldn’t figure that out.
-
The lights confuse me. – I started a new game with Bots. I chose AI level 2 and set the assistance level 3 which if I understand the UI correctly, only blunders should be lit up red. I was Black, AI played b4. Its telling me d5,e6,e5 responses are all bunders? I am not that great at chess, and maybe these are actually all bundlers? It seems a little odd. In another game with me as Black, assistance level 6, it lit up a green square that was just blundering my bishop. It all seemed rather random to be honest. I don’t trust its actually recommending me decent moves. – not sure how to debug things, but it was seems like the board crashed mid game during my initial AI play through with bots. The board just kinda gave up and the screen displayed the ChessUp2 logo with a rectangle under it.
All in all, I know this is a Kickstarter and this platform and software hot off the press. The hardware, and platform is great. Everything I have questions about is software and I don’t doubt will greatly improve over the coming months. I look forward to working through the kinks with you guys!! If there is better place or better method to share feedback, let me know.
I don’t think there is a speaker in there. But one thing I missed pretty quickly is the piece move sound. Something about that sound really says your playing chess, lol. I did get a sounds when starting a game with the phone, but it was more of a buzz and honestly, a pretty jarring and non-pleasant sound.
(Attached is my second move telling me grabbing the middle is a blunder!?).
