World's simplest chess clock

I'm a Chess player...and a good one too.

For anyone new to Chess,apart from the sparkling Black and White Chess board and pieces,the clock used to time our game immediately captures their attention.

The Chess clock is the tool we use to show our emotions to the opponent.

If you see someone banging on the Clock,it sure is an intense game and the players are unable to hold back their feelings.

Although I've been a Chess player for long,I've really not owned one.The reason is that for one,the tournament organizers make sure a clock is provided to the "leaderboards".Second,my opponent would have a clock and lastly, chess clocks are very expensive(at least for a clock).

Recently I had been to a tournament and in this one match,my opponent was taking all the time in the world.She was probably trying to psyche me out or tire me.This was the game where the lack of a clock really hit me and I decided to build one on my own.

To keep costs at a minimum, instead of using AVR or ARM,I went ahead with 8051.

Here is a price comparison.

Next,I wanted to use 7-segment displays to give the clock that "stand out" look but since 7-segments require high current to display bright enough,and which the AT89S52 is not capable of,current driver circuit or relays would have to be used and all of them consume power,a lot actually.

So,the 7-segments were dropped and a 16x2 LCD display took its place.I'm quiet happy with this decision as the clock has turned pretty neat looking.     

Simple push buttons does the job of getting timing inputs or switching between players.

The clock works fantastic.

One thing with using the AT89S52 is that because of its limited flash/code memory,you really have to be efficient at coding.
A way to understand it is that the IC is like an orange.You need to squeeze it hard enough to get the juice out,but not so hard that the juice becomes sour from the peels.

There are 6 control buttons and 1 reset button.
The functions are(starting from the left)
1.Whites button
2."plus one" and "hour mode".
3."plus five" and "minute mode".
4."plus ten"
5."enter" and "pause/resume".

6.Blacks button.

                                
                                                     
                              

It is not,from its looks, a usable chess clock but I think it's turned out great for a prototype 1.
As it stands,it's a good engineering project though.
My plans with it is to get the schematic on a PCB,get it manufactured and tidy it up,make it practically usable.