Can confirm—I made a smart chess set like this years back by soldering Hall effect sensors and wires manually to a wood board for 64 squares. Every new soldered connection feels exponential—totally makes sense they didn’t do it this way.
I would’ve probably done 4 4x4 PCBs instead so a single damaged PCB could be swapped out.
alt Hacker News
Can confirm—I made a smart chess set like this years back by soldering Hall effect sensors and wires manually to a wood board for 64 squares. Every new soldered connection feels exponential—totally makes sense they didn’t do it this way. I would’ve probably done 4 4x4 PCBs instead so a single damaged PCB could be swapped out.