/DGTPegasusTeardown

Repair/teardown of DGT's Pegasus chess board

Repair/teardown of DGT's Pegasus online chess board

We believe that the play area/sensor PCB may be shared with DGT's Centaur

Fault

Inconsistent piece detection (absent and spurious) on two squares.

Teardown

  • A thin board/sensor PCB covers the entire play area.
  • The power/interface PCB is connected to the board/sensor PCB by a ribbon cable.
  • The board/sensor PCB is not accessible without delaminating the board surface (a polyester sticker?)
  • We used heat (a clothes iron) to assist in removing it (the board surface.)
  • A light pipe array (polycarbonate?) is screwed into the black plastic ABS base at the centre and four corners (screws inaccessible without removing the board surface.)
  • The rear surface of the board/sensor PCB holds the play area control electronics.
  • There's an IC on the rear surface of the board/sensor PCB (part of the control electronics, acting as a sensor interface?) Possibly R5F51303ADFL
  • The rear surface of the board/sensor PCB also holds the LED array, LED drivers (8xSTP08CP05) and interfaces to the light pipes (to bring the LED light output to the board surface.)
  • There are row/column tracks on the front and rear of the PCB running to each square - inductive piece detection (essentially very short range metal detection.)

Repair

  • There was a broken track at the end of a row/column leading to inconsistent/missing piece detection.
  • The faulty PCB track was repaired, and following board calibration (a normal process of using the board) the board seems to work as intended.
  • New board artwork was maunfactured and attached.

Related repositories

https://github.com/EdNekebno/DGTCentaurMods