Uploaded June 2026 | Updated September 2026, 1 hour ago
In this video, I'm building something (almost) nobody has done before: a fully autonomous swarm of chess piece robots. Instead of an automatic chess board where one robot drags each piece one-by-one to it's target, I decided to make each individual chess piece a robot. This means I'll have 32 (+2) independent bots, each one capable of thinking, moving, and self-locating on the board.
Check out PCBWay for all your prototyping needs!
pcbway.com
Getting this project working meant overcoming a mountain of problems, from circuit design errors to poor motor selections to manually synchronizing dozens of clocks. But the result is spectacular; a tiny 30mm diameter robot running on a fully custom ESP-32 based pcb with all the accessories to support power management, driving the tiniest stepper motors I've ever seen, and locating itself using electromagnets.
I still have a lot of work to do to finish out the base station and build up the swarm, but now that the concept is proven out that should be easy, right? right....?
If you want to build these yourself, well the designs aren't final yet so proceed at your own risk. Here's all the source code and files!
github.com/DDeGonge/MiniBot
cad.onshape.com/documents/4f8eaef75458146767928ab5/w/f159d6d65b9091531e1ead34/e/13b51722310f27710438c727
#3dprinting #robot #chess
0:00 - Intro
0:54 - First Proto
2:20 - Return of the Stepper
3:43 - Design Constraints
4:35 - Ultrasonic Location
5:32 - Pivot to Electromagnets
6:31 - New Boards!
8:12 - Joystick Mode
8:52 - Positioning Algorithm
10:41 - Synchronizing Clocks
13:20 - Testing & Another issue :)
14:42 - Power Draw
15:05 - What's next?!
A portion of this video is sponsored by PCBWay.
In this video, I'm building something (almost) nobody has done before: a fully autonomous swarm of chess piece robots. Instead of an automatic chess board where one robot drags each piece one-by-one to it's target, I decided to make each individual chess piece a robot. This means I'll have 32 (+2) independent bots, each one capable of thinking, moving, and self-locating on the board.
Check out PCBWay for all your prototyping needs!
pcbway.com
Getting this project working meant overcoming a mountain of problems, from circuit design errors to poor motor selections to manually synchronizing dozens of clocks. But the result is spectacular; a tiny 30mm diameter robot running on a fully custom ESP-32 based pcb with all the accessories to support power management, driving the tiniest stepper motors I've ever seen, and locating itself using electromagnets.
I still have a lot of work to do to finish out the base station and build up the swarm, but now that the concept is proven out that should be easy, right? right....?
If you want to build these yourself, well the designs aren't final yet so proceed at your own risk. Here's all the source code and files!
github.com/DDeGonge/MiniBot
cad.onshape.com/documents/4f8eaef75458146767928ab5/w/f159d6d65b9091531e1ead34/e/13b51722310f27710438c727
#3dprinting #robot #chess
0:00 - Intro
0:54 - First Proto
2:20 - Return of the Stepper
3:43 - Design Constraints
4:35 - Ultrasonic Location
5:32 - Pivot to Electromagnets
6:31 - New Boards!
8:12 - Joystick Mode
8:52 - Positioning Algorithm
10:41 - Synchronizing Clocks
13:20 - Testing & Another issue :)
14:42 - Power Draw
15:05 - What's next?!
A portion of this video is sponsored by PCBWay.
