Greetings,

I decided to purchase one of the remaining Revelation 2 units and had it imported from a chess shop in Germany. It arrived in good cosmetic shape and appears to be free of defects. I enjoy playing the native engines and this is the primary purpose for me, but I was curious about the status of connectivity to phone/computer, etc. Here are some of my findings:

(1) I obtained the 2.0.24 rabbitplugin driver from DGT, which I had tried years ago with Fritz and it had working LEDs. Interestingly, the LEDs do not function. My Revelation is FW 3.36c and when I last saw this working (years ago), the unit had FW 3.23 if I remember correctly. I cannot try the Rabbitplugin from DGT with LucasChess because DGT only provided a 64-bit only package and LucasChess only seems to work with 32-bit drivers (i.e., 32-bit version of dgtebdll.dll). So no luck with Fritz and LEDs, but movement detection works.

(2) I tried the latest 2.0.27 rabbit plugin and the same result as scenario (1)

(3) I tried LiveChess DGT Software but it does not detect the board at all. The LiveChess software does detect my regular DGT eBoard. I wonder if the eBoard functionality in the Revelation 2 has not been updated and therefore does not work with some newer applications? Is the eBoard FW part of the regular DGT Revelation 2 FW package or can it be updated separately somehow to match the current eBoards? In rabbitplugin, it shows my Revelation 2 eBoard mode as "board version 0.60" and "clock version 2.1"

(4) Acid Ape Chess - this appears to work with the Revelation 2 in eBoard mode but unfortunately no LEDs. I confirmed with AAC support that this is expected.

(5) LucasChess with Graham's driver. First of all - huge thank you to Graham for supporting this community and I use his driver with other chess boards to great effect (i.e., Millennium w/ ChessLink). However, for the DGT Revelation 2, the LEDs function, but the board frequently gets out of sync with the software. It does not appear to detect the moves in a reliable fashion. I will communicate/troubleshoot with Graham separately, but this same computer works fine with LucasChess/Millennium for LED support, also with Graham's driver. I work in IT for a living, but this of course does not rule out possibility of error on my part..

In terms of the electrical noise that I heard from the unit I briefly had some years ago, this board is quieter. If I hold my ear directly to the keys, I can hear some electrical hiss, but is very minor and not possible to hear it from more than a foot away, even in a quiet room. Overall - I love the DGT Revelation 2 and the engine native options have been expanded greatly since I last tried it some years ago. There is enough there to satisfy me and I did not purchase this unit for online play.

In any event, I just wanted to share my feedback with this great community.

Cheers,
Eric

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Hi Eric,
this is curious.
The old driver 2.0.24 should work fine. I use this version for years without problem and correct LED function.
Grahams driver work also fine for me in all programs: Fritz, Shredder, LucasChess.
Perhaps a reset of Bluetooth in the Bluetooth menu could help.

__________________
Gruß Tobias

Hi Eric,

can you give BearChess a try?
I don't necessarily think it works better with BearChess than with Graham's driver, but maybe then you can see something from the log files.

Lars

I love BearChess! I had a Saitek President in the 1990s and it is great to emulate it!

Unfortunately, the sync issue also happens in BearChess. I've tried resetting the bluetooth on the Revelation, removing and re-adding the bluetooth connection in Windows and other things. Perhaps my bluetooth adapter is not so great, but this same computer and adapter work well with the Millennium and ChessLink. Interestingly I have ChessDojo on an Android device and it works perfectly so far with the Revelation 2 - both sync and LED lights.

I've attached some images and the logs from BearChess in case anyone would take a look with more experience in such matters than myself. The last move (Q to D6) registers on the board itself since it is shows up in the display on the Revelation, however, it does not register in BearChess.

I am also attaching a screenshot to illustrate the problem I see with Graham's driver on my computer. The black knight has a ghost remaining on the G4 square, in this case, in LucasChess.

I've played a number of full games using LucasChess/Fritz and Graham's driver on the Millennium and it has been flawless. No sync issues and no LED issues. If it was the computer or bluetooth then I would expect this combination to not work as well, but I could be wrong.

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	DGT_1_log.txt (494,4 KB, 35x aufgerufen)
	DGTSC_1_log.txt (230,9 KB, 31x aufgerufen)

Hi Eric,

Thanks, I will have a look but it will take a while.
I will be on holiday next week.
Just one question: your last move on the board was Qd1xd6, but the board display shows Qc7xd6. Is that correct? I have no Revelation to check the behaviour of the board in this situation.

Lars

Hi Lars - yes the move shown on the screen was the black queen moving to that square (D6). My move in response was D1 to D6, taking the black queen with the white queen. So the display is still showing the computer's last move despite my most recent move. The communication issue seems to happen with both captures as well as regular piece movements.. I cannot make it through a game without encountering these type of sync problems