Post #1 (2/7/2026)

So far in my capstone project, I have focused on establishing a strong foundation for my board chess tracking application. After researching different languages, I decided to use React as the primary language for building the app because it allows for better documentation and enables my application to run on various platforms. I found a YouTube tutorial to begin learning how to code with React, as I have never used it or interacted with it before. The video is around 11 hours long, and my goal by the end of this week is to have a good enough understanding of the language to where I can get access to the camera.

Post #2 (2/9/2026)

I have now started to work more in depth on my plan for this project and how I would like my interface to work, as well as the flow of my data and interface.
See below for an my current plan for the in game UI (User Interface).

Post #3 (2/16/2026)

This week I gained access to the camera through react, and began looking forward at next steps. We determined that a good starting point would be to begin with analyzing still images, then dealing with capturing frames from the live camera later. My goal for this week is to begin experimenting with tracking these images, as well as getting sample videos of me playing chess so that we can test different possible angles, as well as potential issues that may arise that we haven't thought about yet.

Post #4 (2/23/2026)

I am now diving into the meat of my project. Image Tracking. I have begun with coding in Python - a language I am much more familiar with than JavaScript, and will later transfer over the same logic to my JavaScript code. Currently I am able to identify the edges of the board, and drawing Hough Lines to detect the edges of the board (see first image below). Now that I am able to identify the edges of the board, my next steps are to begin to crop out all the unwanted parts of the image (see second image below) and begin to identify the squares within this image.