Muggles discover Wizard's Chess

Our overarching objective was to build a voice-operated chessboard on which pieces move “by themselves.”

To satisfy our objective we had subsystem objectives. The objective of the mechanical team was to create a two-axis gantry that moved sufficiently well to avoid inordinate lag time for the moving of pieces. The objectives of the electrical subteam were to design circuits, shields and code to power two motors and an electromagnet. The mechanical and electrical subteams worked together to design pieces with magnets and 3D print them. The software subteam’s objectives were to code a playable chess game that followed standard chess rules, control the piece’s movement and location tracking, and integrate voice control. Read more

Wizarding World News

Project Overview

Our overarching objective was to build a voice-operated chessboard on which pieces move “by themselves.” To satisfy our objective we had subsystem objectives. The objective of the mechanical team was to create a two-axis gantry that moved sufficiently well to avoid inordinate lag time for the moving of pieces. The objectives of the electrical subteam were to design... Read more

House Cup Taken by...

Subsystems

All the houses! Griffindor (mechanical), Slytherin (electrical), Ravenclaw (software), and Hufflepuff (team management) were necessary for the success of the project. In the final project, all systems were integrated, where voice control causes the movement of a physical piece on the board.Read more

Break in at Gringotts

Budget

Investigations continue into the break-in at Gringotts on 31 July, widely believed to be the work of Dark wizards or witches unknown. Gringotts goblins today insisted that nothing had been taken. The vault that was searched had in fact been emptied the same day. "But we're not telling you what was in there, so keep your noses out if you know what's good for you," said a Gringotts spokesgoblin this afternoon. Additionally, details of the spendings of the Wizard's Chess POE team can be found here.Read more

Mass Breakout from Azkaban

About the Team

In one of the most ominous events of 2014, five of Azkaban's most dangerous wizards and witches escaped, the first breakout of this scale since the one associated with the return of You-Know-Who. These five were associated with the College of the Phoenix, a little known but immensely powerful group on the forefront of wizardly (engineering) education. Their last known whereabouts were somewhere near Needham, MA, USA, code location 'AC 306.'Read more