World Championship Winning Computer Chess Software Program & Downloads for Chess Databases, Analysis and Play on PC, Mac, iPad and iPhone — Visit: Hiarcs.com
This will run in Arena, LucasChess and Shredder in Windows (version 10 or later), but not currently in Linux. I have sent it to Lucas for inclusion in LucasChess so I'm sure the next version (2.01b or 2.02 or...) will include it.
It works slightly differently to my other drivers:
You have to press OK on the New Game/Position screen before setting up the board
Replacing pieces on take backs of capture moves is a bit different
You must start a normal game on the board after first turning on its power before you can set up a custom position
Thanks to Lars (http://www.solanosoft.com/index.php?page=bearchess) I have been able to fix the problem with going straight to a custom position after turning on the board. So that issue no longer exists and I have updated to version 1.1
Dear Graham,
thank you for your work.
Unfortunately I don't have Square Off but I am a happy owner of Chessnut since a couple of days.
Is it true that you are working for something similar for Chessnut?
best wishes,
Jarek
Yes, I have written a driver for the Chessnut board too but my board was from the first batch that had the battery/power supply problem. They are going to send me a replacement but at the moment China is pretty much locked down and the global delivery system is a mess, so I'm not sure when I will get it. I'm hoping I'll be able to release the driver in a month or so, so you'll have to be a bit patient!
Once done it will allow the Chessnut Air board to be used in the Windows version of Arena, LucasChess and Shredder provided you have Windows 10 that's had an update since 2017.
Wanted to thank you for this - my SOP is working perfectly playing against Shredder
Any possibility of getting the SOP to work with HIARCS or Fritz interfaces?
Thank you! I find it unacceptable that Square Off forces it's customers to purchase a subscription just to have their face to face games recorded! I almost returned the board before I found your driver. Thanks again.
I have Chessbase 17 and use it for repertoire training. I would like to train using my Square Off Pro board. However, after loading a file then switching to the "Board" tab and checking the "DGT Board" checkbox the game window gets cleared.
Can you fix your driver so we can use our boards to train?
Square Off have decided, unlike all the other board manufacturers, that their business model will be to sell both boards and subscription services. I think that is unfair for the original backers and also unfair if they aren't making it clear to new purchasers, but at the end of the day they have every right to run their business how they choose to. One effect of this that you should be aware of is that my driver, and other third party programs that support their boards, are directly affecting their business plans. There is a chance that in the future they will release board firmware updates that block our programs from working. Earlier this year they did issue an update that did just this but it was still possible for us to amend our programs/driver to work. (I suspect that was more of a mistake on their part though, as posts on their Facebook group and on other forums say that the update also broke their own app.) We might not be so fortunate next time around.
I don't have Chessbase but to play through a game in Fritz the process is to prepare for a new game (playing as White) in Fritz, click "DGT board" and then, after clicking OK on my driver, load the file. Unfortunately due to the way Fritz works I need to send a "New game" message back to Fritz when loading my driver for it to work properly and that is what clears the file you had already loaded. Doing it the other way around should work.
