Posts

Chess for Android 4.5.1

Long overdue, but I finally published an update for Chess for Android: version 4.5.1. No major new features, but simply a few minor improvements: localization of the spoken text (so hopefully no longer a funny mixture of English and the local language while announcing moves) and some under water improvements to engine management. As usual, available on my Android website and Google Play . Also as usual, comments welcome.

Chess for Glass Update!

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Luckily, the feedback on the first release of Chess for Glass has overall been positive. Criticism I have seen, and also agree with, focus on (1) mistakes made by voice recognition with similarly sounding files (since b, c, d, e, and g all sound similar) and (2) placing the voice menu over the chess board. The next release addresses the first issue with the ability to enable a  phonetic alphabet for voice input. In this mode, voice input uses the phonetic alphabet for files (alpha, bravo, charlie, etc) without further from or to designation. Example: "ok glass, pawn, echo two, echo four" plays the pawn from e2 to e4. Although uncommon in chess notation, this form of voice input is less prone to sound ambiguities. As for the second issue, I am afraid that showing the voice menus over the board will stay for a while though. One of the reasons I wrote Chess for Glass was to demonstrate some features of the GDK (the Glass SDK) since I work in that team in Google[x]

More on Komodo 8

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Because Komodo 8 , the world's #1 engine, is distributed as an Android Chessbase compatible engine, it is immediately available for import in Chess for Android on your phone, tablet, or smart-watch, and in Chess for Glass on your Glass device. Many thanks to Mark, Larry, and Jeremy for making this amazing engine available. I wish I could have shared my excitement over this with Don too.

Komodo 8 for Android

The extremely strong Komodo 8 chess engine is now available for Android (see the playstore link and the developers website ).  It runs directly in Chess for Android and potentially even in Chess for Glass (by sideloading the APK). How exciting to see this powerful engine available on my favorite platform!

Chess for Glass

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Besides Chess for Android, I have been working on another project, which has been officially released today! Chess for Glass Chess for Glass is Glassware that runs directly on Glass. You can enter moves by simply saying the moves, or by using the touch pad. Other features include a choice in board color, spoken move announcements, and the ability to import any third party chess engine to replace the friendly built-in Java engine. Chess for Glass recognizes all Android Chessbase compatible engines that are installed on the same Glass device, and supports both the popular UCI and XBoard/WinBoard protocols.

DJI Phantom 2 Vision Clips

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Some clips I took together with Karina during the long weekend.

DJI Phantom 2 Vision+

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A few weeks back, I got a DJI Phantom 2 Vision+ for my birthday. This quadcopter is very easy to fly and the recorded videos are very stable thanks to the built-in high precision 3-axis camera stabilization system. I have posted several recordings of the first test flights on Google+ already, so make sure to follow me there too!. I plan to post some videos here too. Stay tuned!

It is coming!

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Chess for Glass

Fruit Reloaded avaiable for Android

The chess engine Fruit reloaded (an fork of Fruit by Fabien Letouzey, Daniel Mehrmann, and Ryan Benitez) now also includes Android builds. I have just tested this in Chess for Android , and it works great. Nice to see a still increasing popularity of Android as chess platform!

USB Chessboards

Bryan Whitby features a nice USB Chess Board website with a lot of information and links on USB chess boards. On this site, you can find details on hardware and software for connecting a chess board to a tablet or computer. A must read for anyone who enjoys playing computers but prefers playing on a real board. I, obviously, especially liked the video of Frank Walls Android USB board that features Chess for Android . I have embedded the video below.

Chess OCR

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Gerhard Roth wrote various very interesting chess OCR applications that enable you to scan chess positions from books and open these directly in your favorite chess application for further analysis. Much faster than manually entering these positions through a position setup editor. The application supports the Android sharing mechanism I blogged about a while back. For example, as illustrated below, first open a chess book at an interesting position, then invoke Gerhard's OCR application to scan the position, and finally select sharing to open, for instance, Chess for Android for further analysis with your favorite UCI or XBoard engine. Chess for Android version 4.5 also introduced a fast way to invoke Gerhard's application. Long press the notation window, and the select Retrieve Position. This will bring you back in the OCR application again (or give you a choice if several such applications exist) to scan the next position. Great job Gerhard writing this

Chess for Android v4.5

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It has been a while since the last update, since I have been a bit busy at work, but I finally had some time for two new features in Chess for Android, version 4.5 now available through the playstore or as direct download : Spoken chess text (option to announce all moves) Retrieve position function (direct link with Gerhard Roth's OCR app ) To enable the new chess speech feature, simply press the menu button, select "Options", and then enable the "Spoken Moves" option (see check-mark below). After that, Chess for Android announces the chess moves made on the board, as well as the final outcome of the game. For now, only the english language is supported. A follow-up posting will go into more detail on the OCR feature.

Chess for Android on a Smartwatch

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A few days back I got a very kind email from Branko with some pictures of Chess for Android running on a Galaxy Gear smartwatch. I never tested a much smaller screen, and was glad the scalable drawing methods displayed the board rather well. Thanks Branko for these pictures and your nice email!

Eyepiece Projection Continued

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Because the 26mm eyepiece does not fit in the Meade basic camera adapter, and the 9.7mm eyepiece has too much light loss in my modest Meade ETX-90EC, I purchased a 15mm eyepiece. This eyepiece fits comfortably in the adapter. Less magnification than the 9.7mm eyepiece, of course, but therefore also less light loss. Below already a quick result (taken at dawn) together with two pictures from the September 7 posting (taken during the day) for comparison. The slight curvature in the picture is a bit worrisome, still have to look more into that. Can't wait though to try some real astrophotography with the new eyepiece. prime focus (rear port) 9.7mm eyepiece projection (adapter) 15mm eyepiece projection (adapter)

Prime focus vs. eyepiece projection

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Since the moon is back at a normal hour, I could do some more experiments with astrophotography. Below a comparison between prime focus and 9.7mm eyepiece projection photograph of the moon using an Meade ETX-90EC. Disappointing result for the latter, since a digital zoom on the prime focus photo is much more clear.