10 February 2011

This Board Is Not an Island

All of the auctions featured in this fortnightly series on Top eBay Chess Items by Price, like the most recent post, Austin and Eames, have been for collectibles. On this post I'm bucking the trend with an item whose title was 'DGT SENSORY CHESS BOARD BLUETOOTH / WIRELESS version'. It sold 'Buy It Now' for GBP 448.00, 'approximately US $721.95' according to eBay's currency conversion.

DGT, whose acronym stands for 'Digital Game Technology', is well known within the chess world for its line of digital chess clocks. The description of the eBay item was taken from the DGT product page, DGT Bluetooth Wireless e-Board (digitalgametechnology.com)...

Some special features of the DGT wireless e-board.
  • 10+ meters Bluetooth true-wireless communication, 40+ meters successfully tested indoors with high quality dongle.
  • USB wired communication (3.5 meter mini-USB cable included)
    [...]

...and a web search on 'special features of the DGT wireless e-board' returns many sellers of the board around the world.

That 'DGT Bluetooth' page also has links to the installation manual and a high level look at how 'small tournaments can use this board for broadcasting games', the starting point for a FAQ -- Support > FAQ > Boards -- which includes a video clip showing the board in action. If that's not enough and, like me, you also want to know how the board communicates with external chess playing software, see DGT Electronic Board Protocol Description.

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