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posted by Fnord666 on Saturday February 29 2020, @06:20AM   Printer-friendly
from the ==-===-*=*-***-* dept.

Learning Morse Code The Ludwig Koch Way:

Most countries have dropped the requirement for learning Morse code to become a ham radio operator. Because of that, you might think Morse code is dead. But it isn't. Some people like the nostalgia. Some like that you can build simple equipment to send and receive Morse code. Others like that Morse code is much more reliable than voice and some older digital modes. Regardless of the reason, many people want to learn Morse code and it is still a part of the ham radio scene. The code has a reputation of being hard to learn, but it turns out that is mostly because people haven't been taught code in smart ways.

[...] If you want to learn the code, or if you want to learn it better than you know it now, the Koch method is pretty simple. If a bunch of students can learn code in 14 hours, you should be able to, as well. Even spending an hour a day, that's only two weeks.

There are plenty of resources, but one we like is LCWO (Learn CW Online — CW or Continous Wave is ham-speak for Morse code). The site costs nothing and will track your progress. Once you've learned it, you can practice text, words, callsigns, and common ham radio exchanges.

Even if you don't need Morse for a ham license anymore, it does open up new opportunities. If you don't want to do ham radio, think of all the Arduino projects you could do where the device could signal you with a blinking LED and you could command it with a single switch contact. Not that we'd use a scheme like that to count blackjack cards. We'd never do that. If you don't want to use the computer and still need a coach, you could try this 1939 code trainer.


Original Submission

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Typing By Slamming Your Laptop Closed. Repeatedly 13 comments

Typing By Slamming Your Laptop Closed. Repeatedly:

Do you sometimes feel that your custom mechanical keyboard is not quite loud enough to proclaim your superior hacking powers? Or do you need a more forceful way shout in all caps at someone who is wrong on the internet? For all this and more, [Jesse Li] has got you covered, with a set of bash scripts that allows you to type by slamming your laptop closed repeatedly, using Morse code.

The scripts are quite simple, and work receiving the lid open/close events from ACPI (Advanced Configuration and Power Interface), recording the open and close timestamp and converting the timing to dots and dashes. After slamming to the required rhythm, you keep the lid open to see the character appear.

Yes, I see no practical use for this. Yes, I think it is a neat "hack". Had an itch and scratched it. Any soylentils here done their own Morse transceiver? How about on your smart phone? Transmit by long- or short-press anywhere on the screen for dits and dahs. Receive by phone vibration. Nearly silent communication while never needing to look at the screen!

Previously:
(2020-02-29) Learning Morse Code The Ludwig Koch Way
(2016-06-22) Ham it up! 2016 ARRL Field Day is June 25-26
(2015-02-27) Verizon Issues Furious Response to FCC, in Morse Code, Dated 1934
(2014-05-11) First Covert Communication System with Lasers
(2014-04-03) The POW Who Blinked "Torture" In Morse Code


Original Submission

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  • (Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 29 2020, @08:56AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 29 2020, @08:56AM (#964549)

    You morans

  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by crb3 on Saturday February 29 2020, @10:12AM (5 children)

    by crb3 (5919) on Saturday February 29 2020, @10:12AM (#964557)

    I had one port pin left on an 8051-based device built for hire... So I hooked up a loud piezo-oscillator to it and had it send me short progress and debug messages in Morse. I could hear it all over the factory. The ASCII-to-Morse routines were table-driven, based on a CDP1802 message keyer published in either 73 or Kilobaud. After I was done with it, the techs using the device found just the sound of the 'OK' message recognizable and useful and left the noisemaker jumpered in, albeit with some masking tape over its mouth to cut down on the volume.

    Those same tables and routines, ported to C, became an state-driven expansion of beep that I called morbeep. Some of my machines don't have soundcards but have PC speakers, and they tell me things in Morse. Booting back up after a powercut isn't so much chasing from screen to screen as listening to machines signing on. Countdown minutes to takeoff, as Perl-generated WAV files (another port of those routines) used by cron-triggered scripts, came in quite handy in getting my kids out the door in time for the schoolbus; after awhile they didn't have to ask what minute it was. All that constant low-level use of Morse is why my head-copy capability didn't totally leak away in the years where single-parenting was too attention-consuming for me to put up wires.

    • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 29 2020, @11:24AM (3 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 29 2020, @11:24AM (#964566)

      WTF are you taling about?!?!?

      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by anubi on Saturday February 29 2020, @12:46PM (2 children)

        by anubi (2828) on Saturday February 29 2020, @12:46PM (#964574) Journal

        I'm afraid your age is showing. Morse predates both ASCII, Baudot, and EBCDIC as a method for sending messages along a wire or any other medium.

        I'm not trying to get uppity...my age shows too...try to discuss modern programming languages with me and I have a similar deer in the headlights response. C++/Assembler is the last language I consider myself much fluent in. As far as I am concerned, if I get complex projects, there should be a library for that. Just as libraries for driving chips for Arduinos save me a lot of time. This new stuff has become for me like trying to find needles in haystacks. It's all too easy for me to not find a tiny bug that causes a helluva big mess.

        I am doing the same Morse stuff on my van's Arduino.

        It is how I am going to covertly communicate with the van's computer should I find myself in a hijack situation. Or in the event someone steals it, they won't be able to make the van behave. I know exactly what that computers gonna do. It will stall when stopped and refuse to restart. And mimic a dead battery. I am counting on it to help me wage my own private war on those who compel me into valet parking.

            I don't want nobody messing with my machinery. Wanna borrow my van? Go learn morse! I can always bypass my doings should I need the help of professional mechanics, so it works like stock. I won't be calling in professionals for electronic issues. That's my bag.

        --
        "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
        • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 29 2020, @01:45PM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 29 2020, @01:45PM (#964583)

          Every time you say "van" all I can see is creepy rape guy.

          • (Score: 2, Insightful) by anubi on Sunday March 01 2020, @02:47AM

            by anubi (2828) on Sunday March 01 2020, @02:47AM (#964740) Journal

            Actually, I like having my stuff with me, and keeping the rain and other people's fingers out of it.

            Besides, the DMV considers a van to be classified as a personal use vehicle, but they watch me like a hawk if I haul a load in the bed of a pickup truck unless I register it as a commercial vehicle. More tax.

            I am retired, and like the idea I can just load my stuff in the van, maybe buy a trailer, and get the hell outta Dodge, should the local governments become too pesky.

            The van is about the lowest TCO solution for me.

            --
            "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 29 2020, @01:21PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 29 2020, @01:21PM (#964578)

      If you want to translate the "dept." line, I found this encoding works with one online translator. The traditional "-" characters between the "dept." words are used for "dah" in Morse...
            -- --- .-. ... .

      Morse code was used at Atari (arcade games) as part of a security-by-obscurity scheme. Here's a quote from a hardware guru, https://www.jmargolin.com/vgens/vgens.htm [jmargolin.com]

      I also used the TMS320P15 (a TMS32010 with an on-board EPROM Program Memory) in Race Drivin', mostly to provide security. I supported another team's project using the TMS320P15 for security. The TMS320P15 was supposedly hack-proof once the Security Bit was set. It wasn't. The reason I know is that in that project I put in an undocumented program that sent out the Atari copyright message in Morse Code. Because of the DSP's speed it could be received by just placing a standard AM radio near the PC Board. The program was called only by grounding an innocuously unused I/O pin during Reset. When Atari received a counterfeited game to examine, I placed an AM radio near the board, grounded the aforementioned I/O pin, gave it a Reset, and heard my Copyright Message on the radio.

      The name of that game was Road Riot.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 29 2020, @01:53PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 29 2020, @01:53PM (#964586)

    That looks like a fun thing to tinker with this weekend. Thanks for the link!

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 29 2020, @03:05PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 29 2020, @03:05PM (#964599)

    Anyone saw such wonder? All the ones I tried were buggy as hell. Often coudn't decode their own output or output manually entered into it.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 29 2020, @03:44PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 29 2020, @03:44PM (#964611)

    -.. .-. .- .. -. / - .... . / ... .-- .- -- .--.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 29 2020, @04:34PM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 29 2020, @04:34PM (#964616)

      - .-. ..- -- .--. / -... .- .-. . .-.. -.-- / ..- -. -.. . .-. ... - .- -. -.. ... / . -. --. .-.. .. ... ....

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 29 2020, @05:21PM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 29 2020, @05:21PM (#964626)

        ____
          / /' `\ \
          \ ( )( ) /
            \{~~~~}/
              { /\ }
              { } { }
            { } { }
          {- } { -}
        _| | | |_
        \[ ] [ ]/

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 29 2020, @05:55PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 29 2020, @05:55PM (#964632)

          ..--.- ..--.- ..--.- ..--.-
              -..-. -..-. .----. `\ \
              \ -.--. -.--.- -.--. -.--.- -..-.
                  \{~~~~}-..-.
                      { -..-.\ }
                      { } { }
                  { } { }
              {-....- } { -....-}
          ..--.-| | | |..--.-
          \-.--. -.--.- -.--. -.--.- -..-.

  • (Score: 2) by engblom on Sunday March 01 2020, @01:40PM (2 children)

    by engblom (556) on Sunday March 01 2020, @01:40PM (#964871)

    Many times I have considered to learn Morse just for having a Morse keyboard in the phone. The advantage of a such keyboard is obvious: as you have only one big button you can type without looking at the screen. There are so many situations when I would want to type something while keeping my eyes somewhere else. For example, typing in an address while driving, writing a quick response while being in a meeting etc.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 01 2020, @07:59PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 01 2020, @07:59PM (#965049)

      You might try typing 8-bit ascii, using 8 buttons, one under each finger (leave your thumbs curled around the steering wheel.) Steve Roberts did this while on his recumbent bike, he was cycling around the USA in early days of the internet, using ham radio to connect to his site.

      Probably no harder to learn ascii bit patterns than it is to learn Morse(??)

    • (Score: 2) by crb3 on Monday March 02 2020, @04:16AM

      by crb3 (5919) on Monday March 02 2020, @04:16AM (#965289)

      IMO you'll be better served by having two buttons, for dit and dah, and incorporating an iambic keyer into the code interface, which can also have a WPM dit-rate control. Machine reception/decoding, even with a good rate-adaptive internal clock, can choke on sloppy hand-keying, and your one screen button won't allow you anywhere near the precision of a Navy knob straight key. You're in luck that there's an open-source project whose code you can study/raid: K3NG's Arduino-based iambic keyer is widely regarded as excellent.

      https://github.com/k3ng/k3ng_cw_keyer/wiki [github.com]

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 01 2020, @02:28PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 01 2020, @02:28PM (#964889)

    Including the most recent Oscar winner ‘Parasite’

  • (Score: 1) by RandomFactor on Sunday March 01 2020, @04:52PM

    by RandomFactor (3682) Subscriber Badge on Sunday March 01 2020, @04:52PM (#964948) Journal

    K and M down....

    --
    В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
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