n-maido / ace-backend

ACE - Accessible Chess Experience

ACE (Accessible Chess Experience) is a real time voice powered chess application which lets you play online with your friends. The game has features like moving pieces, finding pieces on board, getting board summary, repeating opponent moves, and much more, all implemented using voice commands.

Inspiration

We looked online and found out that two of the most popular chess websites, lichess and chess.com, have no voice options for the visually impaired. We wanted to create something, that can help those who are visually impaired to have a complete experience without the hassle on relying on screen readers for every single move. And thus originated the idea of voice powered chess, ACE.

Features

1. Play chess online with your friends using voice commands

2. Move chess piece using voice

3. Find piece on a particular square

4. Get chessboard summary

5. Get voice alerts for invalid moves, check and checkmate situations

Tech Stack

1. Frontend - ReactJS
2. Backend - NodeJS
3. Speech-To-Text - Azure Speech SDK
4. Real Time Communications - Web Sockets

Try It Yourself

Here is a link to the website

Dev Setup

Prerequisites

• NodeJS
• npm
• Azure account and Azure Speech Resource

Start the server

1. Clone this repository
2. cd into the ACE-Backend folder
3. Create a .env file and add the SPEECH_KEY and SPEECH_REIGON from your azure speech service credenials. (Refer to .env.example file)
4. Go to the terminal and run the following commands

npm install
node app.js

The server will be started at localhost:8000

Start the client

Link to frontend repository

1. Clone the above repository
2. cd into the ACE folder
3. Open the config.js file in src/services folder
4. Replace CLIENT_URL with http://localhost:3000
5. Replace SERVER_URL with http://localhost:8000
6. Go to the terminal and run the following commands

npm install
npm start

The server will be started at localhost:8000

Screenshots