// Raspberry Pi · RGB LED Matrix · Chess
A real, physical chess board built on a Raspberry Pi. 32×32 RGB LEDs. 64 magnetic reed switches. Alpha-beta AI. LAN and internet multiplayer with a live browser spectator.
// What is Chess101
Chess101 is a fully playable chess board where every square is a 4×4 block of individually addressable RGB LEDs on a 32×32 matrix. Pieces glow in your chosen team color, valid moves pulse with light, and the AI animates its search in real time.
Eight Arduinos connected via I2C read magnetic reed switches under every square. The Raspberry Pi knows exactly where every piece sits — no cameras, no computer vision, just magnets and math.
A Mac simulator reuses the exact same rendering code via a Pygame window, so you can develop and play without any Pi hardware at all.
// Features
Full chess rules, beautiful LED animations, a real AI opponent, and internet play — on a board you can hold in your hands.
// Stack
The game logic runs identically on the Pi and on Mac. Only the hardware abstraction layer swaps out.
# Hardware layer (Pi only) rgbmatrix → 32×32 LED matrix (1,024 RGB pixels) smbus / I2C → 8 Arduinos → 64 reed switches # Game logic (runs on Pi and Mac — identical code) Board → color_picker → war_games → do_turn → declare_victory Piece → Pawn · Rook · Bishop · Knight · Queen · King AlphaBeta → minimax tree search with alpha-beta pruning # Mac simulator (hardware-mock layer) FakeRGBMatrix → pygame.Surface (injected via sys.modules) SimSensor → mouse clicks replace reed switches # Network layer GameServer / GameClient → asyncio WebSocket (LAN) RelayClient → wss://chess101.net (internet) RoomValidator → server-side move legality check BeaconBroadcaster → UDP auto-discovery (LAN)
// How to Play
Run the simulator on Mac — no Pi required. Or deploy to a Pi for the full physical experience.
Full source on GitHub. Dive into the hardware schematics, Pi setup, and the complete Python codebase.