the "wire closet" i showed previously has a bunch of servos with black and white pieces on that it raises and lowers at specific times. the entire board state comes encoded in on 2 or 3 64 bit int wires and the board sends inputs back to the computer. the computer itself's main job of course is, every time a piece is placed, to:
- send a relay across the board in each direction from the new piece looking for a piece of the same color, stopping when encountering an empty space
- if one is found, send a relay back to the original piece's location, this time flipping the color of every piece encountered
