This Is the Best Chess Board Ever, Because It Is All Split-Flap Displays

Chess is all about strategy; the particulars of the board and pieces don’t really matter — you could play with Skittles as pieces and a board scratched into the dirt. But there are chess sets on the market that cost several thousand dollars, so clearly people do care. And if you’re the type of person that cares, you’ll want to check out the best chess board ever conceived.

We don’t have a lot of information about this, but we don’t need much detail to appreciate the concept. This was posted by e4_user to Reddit and it is amazing. The entire chess “board” is actually just a bunch of split-flap displays capable of showing any specific piece. There are indicators for piece color and the flaps are either white or gray, so there is a still a visible grid.

As far as game logic goes, this would work in the same way as any other digital chess setup without animation graphics — the piece would disappear from its original location and appear at the new chosen location, so long as that move is allowed. If it takes another piece, that will disappear from the board entirely.

Electronically, the situation is far more complicated. Each split-flap display needs its own motor and there are 64 of them. In this case, an ESP32 development board is the “brain” running the chess engine, while a bunch of Raspberry Pi Pico development boards control the split-flap displays. However, e4_user plans to make a dedicated controller later, which would likely use microcontrollers, drivers, and multiplexing of some sort to achieve the same effect more efficiently.

This is just an early demonstration and e4_user has only finished building five of the eight rows of eight split-flap displays. But it is already really satisfying to see in action. We have no doubt that it will be a huge hit when e4_user completes the build.