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I am considering purchasing a DGT Bluetooth Wireless E-Board for my school's chess club for exhibition games to be broadcast to a room without having everyone hovering over the board.
Are these boards sufficiently stable and reliable that, once configured, they can be used weekly without requiring any expert attention? I'm thinking both of the ability to detect what pieces have been moved and also the reliability of the Bluetooth connection.
Bluetooth supports distance of less than 30 feet, or 10 meters, and 802.11b is roughly up to 200 feet, though both distances depend on a number of factors; mention WiFi since it's possible that might be a better solution for your needs. Here's the DGT manual for "Connecting your Bluetooth board to your Computer", which might provide additional information of value to you.
Also, it appears that the DGT boards do have problems, here's an example; note the pawn falls, and the screen does not report the pawn is not where it is suppose to be; note that the board is not the Bluetooth model, though in this case, I don't believe it matters; also, it's possible this is not a hardware issue, but related to the software used in the demo I've linked to just now.
Given that the board appears to be $1000+, it's unlikely you're going to find enough reviews to judge if it's a good fit for your needs. My suggestion would be to make sure that you're 100% sure it's possible to return it at near to no cost given the price of the board.
While not a review of the Bluetooth model, here's a review of a DGT board that appears to use the same technology, minus the Bluetooth.
I just posted a review of the DGT board on Amazon. The software related to the DGT boards is VERY UNSTABLE and crashes too often to make them usable in practical play. Here is a link to the review, but ultimately here is what I said also:
URL: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003M88VKS#customerReviews
A friend and I both have the DGT board and while the board and chess pieces appear to work fine, we have tried to get the related software drivers and ICC.com and PlayChess.com to cooperate. We have failed and have sent logs to DGT support for anwers after having done everything they recommended and installed latest drivers and software. The physical boards seem generally fine but the software does not work well (stability) across the internet sites ICC.com and playchess.com. We are only able to get through a game or a fraction of the game before all stops working. The boards seem stable if you play Fritz locally, but considering our goal was to play each other via the Internet, and not just play a computer locally, the DGT boards so far has not been a good investment. Be aware that they probably work fine locally on your computer but not very well across the Internet in their current release of software as of the time of this post. We are still actively sending logs and working with DGT support to try and improve the situation, but no luck. We have tried 4 computers, Windows 7 32 bit and 64 bit so far, and loaded all their latest drivers etc. We are greatly disappointed so far. We also wish chess.com would support the DGT board in the future, but that is an aside, but be aware chess.com is not supporting the DGT board so far also.
