Using it

Daily use & webadmin

First-time Wi-Fi setup, what the clock does on its own after that, and every setting in the webadmin portal explained.

First boot Day to day LED meanings Webadmin, field by field

First boot: connecting to Wi-Fi

Connect to the setup hotspot

With no Wi-Fi saved yet, the clock creates its own network. On your phone or laptop, connect to:

Network nameIvoChess-Setup

Open the webadmin page

Open http://192.168.4.1/ in a browser (or just wait for the captive-portal prompt to pop up on its own). It'll ask for a login:

Usernameivochess
Passwordcheckmate

Change this password later from the portal's own "Webadmin access" section — see below.

Fill in Wi-Fi and save

Enter your home network's name and password, then save. The clock restarts and joins your network — from then on it's reachable at http://ivochess.local/ (or its IP) instead of the setup hotspot.

Connect chess.com, Lichess, or ChessConnect

One more step before it can show a live game — see the account connection guide for how to set up any of the three.

Day to day

Once it's set up, the clock runs on its own — no phone or app needed to actually use it.

Waiting for game screen

Waiting for a game

Sits idle showing Wi-Fi and battery status. Start any live game on whichever data source is connected — chess.com, Lichess, or ChessConnect — from a physical board, an app, or the website itself, and the clock picks it up automatically within a few seconds. If it sits idle for 10 minutes straight with no game, it stops checking and shows "Restart for new game" — a quick power cycle (the on/off switch) brings it back. This just keeps a clock left on all day from polling forever with nobody at the board.

Live game screen

During the game

Both clocks, both ratings, and the move count update live as the game is played, with a marker showing whose turn it is.

Result screen

After the game

Shows the result — win, loss, or draw, with the reason and rating change — for a configurable number of seconds before returning to the waiting screen.

While idle, the screen periodically alternates with a plain IvoChess Clock logo screen — that's intentional, it protects the e-paper panel from burn-in over long idle periods. It never does this mid-game.

The physical button

The button on top of the clock does different things depending on which data source is connected.

Data sourceWhat pressing it does
ChessConnect (Bluetooth)Sends your move. Make the move on the physical board first, then tap the button to actually transmit it to the connected app — this is what stops an accidental move firing just from touching or nudging a piece, and makes the clock feel like a real analog chess clock.
Chess.com / Lichess (Wi-Fi)Resumes checking for a new game after the clock's idle timeout ("Restart for new game"), without needing to power-cycle the device.

What the LEDs mean

All 8 LEDs always show the same color together (the case diffuses the light, so individual LEDs aren't distinguishable). Every color and both brightness levels below are configurable from the webadmin.

SituationDefault color
No Wi-Fi connectionPurple
Low batteryRed, blinking
Your turnCyan
Opponent's turnYellow
You wonGreen
You lostPink
Draw / unknownWhite

Brightness automatically steps down at night (22:00–7:00 by default) so it's not glaring in a dark room — both the day and night brightness levels are adjustable.

Freshly built your clock? Before closing up the case, use the Test LED colors and Test (sound) buttons in the webadmin — see below — to confirm the strip and buzzer are wired correctly, without having to actually reach every game state.

Webadmin, field by field

Reachable at http://ivochess.local/ (or the clock's IP) any time it's on your network. It's organized into four tabs — Main (Wi-Fi and webadmin login), Connections (chess.com, Lichess, data source), Sounds, and LEDs — each with its own Save button, so saving one doesn't touch fields you're still editing on another tab. Most changes apply immediately with no restart — only a Wi-Fi network/password change reboots the clock.

Wi-Fi

Network name and password. Changing either reconnects the clock — useful for moving it to a different network without a factory reset.

Chess.com account

A single CHESSCOM_REMEMBERME cookie, plus your chess.com username (used to show "you" on the correct side of the game screen, and to resolve win/loss). The clock derives and refreshes its own session from that one token, so there's nothing else to paste. See the account connection guide for how to get it.

Lichess account

A proper OAuth login — click "Connect to Lichess," approve access on Lichess's own site, and you're done. No cookies or copy-pasting involved. See the account connection guide for details.

ChessConnect

No account to connect here — just select it as the data source and pair the clock from Chessconnect's own settings. See the account connection guide for the steps.

Display

Language (English/Portuguese) and how many seconds the result screen stays up after a game ends before returning to the waiting screen.

Data source

Switch between chess.com, Lichess, and ChessConnect as the clock's live game source. Switching never erases the others' saved credentials — flip back any time without reconnecting.

LED colors

A color picker for each situation in the table above, plus separate day/night brightness sliders (0–255). A "Number of LEDs" field is also here — it only matters if your build uses a different strip length than the default, so leave it alone otherwise. Use the "Test LED colors" button to cycle the strip through all 7 configured colors, about 1.5 seconds each, so you can preview the whole set — even colors you just typed and haven't saved yet — without having to actually reach every game state.

Sound

A volume slider (0–100%, where 0 is mute) applies to every event — handy for turning it down or off entirely somewhere quiet, like a library. 100% is as loud as the bare piezo speaker can go; there's no amplifier, so it can't go louder than that.

Below that, one card per game event — game started, opponent's move, your move, check (ChessConnect only), you won, you lost, draw, and game end. Each has its own mute checkbox and an optional custom melody field; leave a field blank to use the built-in default melody, shown as the field's placeholder text.

Two melody formats are accepted: a simple comma-separated list of freqHz:durationMs pairs (e.g. 523:100,659:100,0:50,784:150, where 0 is silence), or RTTTL — the classic ringtone format behind countless free pre-made melodies (e.g. Nokia:d=4,o=5,b=125:8e6,8d6,2f#,2g#,8c#6,...). Paste one in directly, no need to compose your own — the webadmin links to a composer and a ringtone library with thousands of free melodies to pick from.

Each event has a "Test" button that plays the melody immediately — even one you just typed and haven't saved — so you can preview it before committing, and a "Reset to default" button to discard your custom melody.

Webadmin access

Change the login username/password for this portal itself — do this soon after first setup, since ivochess/checkmate is a known default.

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Connect your account →

The one remaining step to see a live game on screen.