This automated chessboard by Greg is wonderfully simple, and so cleanly built that we had to ask him for a shot of the underside of the build too, just so you can see that there’s more to it than a standard chessboard.

The chessboard houses an electromagnet moving on a set of extruded aluminium rails, very much like a laser cutter. Two stepper motors and transmission belts move the electromagnet up and down and left and right so it can move the chess pieces above into any position on the board. If you remember the excitement around Deep Blue, the IBM supercomputer that beat Garry Kasparov in a match in 1996-7, you’ll be amazed to learn that the brains for this machine are provided by a simple Arduino Nano.