Wiring
The Citrine has a panel on the right side with connectors and switches.
When the Citrine is fitted into the table that panel will no longer be easy reachable. I wanted the on-off button and the menu button to be relocated to the outside of the table.
The first thing I planned was connecting wires to the existing buttons.
This didn't work out for the on-off button since that turned out to be a so called on-on switch. When you switch the button on, another connection is switched of.
That is why I had to remove the on-off switch from the print. If someone has a solution where you can leave the switch in place please let me know!
The menu switch is a simple momentary switch, so no problem here. I attached two wired to the print and lead them to the new switch on the table.
I hope these pictures are clear enough to show what I did:
With the wiring done I made a small hole in the hardboard cover to lead the wires through, and closed up.
Battery Pack
Another thing I wanted to do is to get rid of the adaptor. I think a classic chess table with a black wire comming out of the side is not very nice. The ideal solution would be to make a recharcheable battery pack, and have the Citrine charge overnight so at daytime I could use the table without wires. When the batteries would run out I wanted to be able to switch to the adaptor. But I didn't end up doing that. Mainly because I don't know how to do it. So I settled for a removable battery back that I could load with either rechargeable or normal batteries.
The battery pack is made of a 400 mm PVC sewer pipe. Remarkably, the large round1.5v D (or LR20) batteries exactly fit into this pipe. I cut out spaces to easier fit the batteries. At both ends I glued on end caps,
and attached a spring to one end and a 5.5/2.1 mm female connector to the other end. A wire runs on the outer side of the pipe from the spring to the connector.
I used two plastic clamps that are normally used to fit the sewer pipe to a wall. Cut off the "feet" of the clamps and attached them to the bottom of the table. Now the battery pack can be easily removed to refill with new batteries.
The only thing left is assembling the table. On the next page I'll show how I fitted the Citrine into the table, connected it and played my first game on it.
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