Morse code learning tool?

Miles. k

I'm trying to build a device to teach myself Morse code. i want it to have 2 inputs (one for .'s one for -'s) and display the characters on a LCD.
BUT... i have to make the code recognize a certain sequence of .'s and -'s to make letters and numbers.

how would i go about doing this??

Thanks,
Miles

Mike Green

Having two inputs, one for dots and one for dashes, helps a lot. The main thing you have to look for is the space between characters and the space between words. What you can do is to arbitrarily determine a fixed time for the inter-character spacing like 1/2 second. Your main loop has to recognize whether a dot or dash or space is present. A dot can be a zero bit and a dash can be a one bit shifted into a byte. If a space occurs, then that's the end of the byte of data, the program looks up the character, and zeroes the byte for the next character. Characters are always 5 items (dots or dashes) or less. You'll need a table, probably made with DATA statements so the data is stored in the EEPROM. You might have one table for each number of items with the received bits used as the index into the table and the table would contain the translated characters. The first table would contain "E" and "T" for "." and "-". The 2nd table would contain "I", "A", "N", and "M" for "..", ".-", "-.", and "--".

Spiral_72

That sounds like a fun project actually. If I remember right, there are two types of keyers, a standard single switch type and a paddle type. The single switch, you "blip" for dot and hold for dash. The paddle types are for the crazy fast keyers. I think the left paddle is a dot, and the right is a dash.

I'm thinking like Mike, using two inputs (paddle type) will simplify you programming GREATLY!

I'd really like to see your code when you get it finished. I don't have an LCD, but I guess I could debug the characters to the console.

Very cool.

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"puff"...... Smile, there went another one.

kf4ixm

check out this project where he used a bs2 to make an 'automated fox' to output cw. might be a starting point for you.

http://www.qsl.net/wd4bis/bstamp.htm

WBA Consulting

This helped me in learning and might help in developing your code to interpret the inputs. Move to the left for a dash (dah) and to the right for a dot (dit)

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Andrew Williams
WBA Consulting
WBA-TH1M Sensirion SHT11 Module
Special Olympics Polar Bear Plunge, Mar 20, 2010

Leon

It's best to learn Morse using a straight key.

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Leon Heller
Amateur radio callsign: G1HSM