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Show HN: I made an app that decodes Morse code audio into text

45 points by ggerganov 5y ago

ggerganov 5y ago
Hi HN, I recently got inspired by my father's ham contests and decided to make a mobile application that uses the phone's microphone to capture audio from the radio and decode the CW signal into text. The app is free, open-source and is called GGMorse - checkout the github link for more information. The decoding process is fully automated - you simply have to put your phone next to the radio and the app should automatically detect the sound frequency and speed of the transmission. You can easily test it by generating a Morse code audio on your PC using one of the many web sites on the internet, or simply use the App's built-in Tx option. Cheers!
- dane-pgp 5y ago
  That's really great, thanks for making this! Any chance of extending it to support "visual" Morse, i.e. a flashing light detected by the phone's camera? If such a tool became more common, embedded devices could produce almost user-accessible messages just by flashing a status LED.
  - ryankrage77 5y ago
    Now I'm tempted to learn morse so I can have a embedded device blink an LED at me to give me weather/news/time notifications.
  - ggerganov 5y ago
    Decoding visual Morse code sounds like a fun project to try - will give it a thought!
imvetri 5y ago
Thanks for sharing!
miles 5y ago
Thanks for crafting and sharing this. Relatedly, I’m still using Morsebord[1] for easy, fast, single-thumb typing in iOS 14, though it has long been abandoned and removed from the App Store. [1] https://appadvice.com/app/morseboard/927529935 https://appadvice.com/app/morseboard/927529935
clueless123 5y ago
This brings nice old memories to me.. Some forty some years ago, as a kid, I wrote a morse-to-text decoder program in Basic that took it's input from the audio in port that Tandy's Model 1 had to load code from audio cassetes. Big was my surprise when the text coming out was mostly few letters long amateur radio "codes" sparkled with actual words here and there.. pretty much uninteligeble stuff. Still it was a great experience for a young kid of the time.

45 points by ggerganov 5y ago

Hi HN, I recently got inspired by my father's ham contests and decided to make a mobile application that uses the phone's microphone to capture audio from the radio and decode the CW signal into text. The app is free, open-source and is called GGMorse - checkout the github link for more information. The decoding process is fully automated - you simply have to put your phone next to the radio and the app should automatically detect the sound frequency and speed of the transmission. You can easily test it by generating a Morse code audio on your PC using one of the many web sites on the internet, or simply use the App's built-in Tx option. Cheers!

dane-pgp 5y ago
That's really great, thanks for making this! Any chance of extending it to support "visual" Morse, i.e. a flashing light detected by the phone's camera? If such a tool became more common, embedded devices could produce almost user-accessible messages just by flashing a status LED.
- ryankrage77 5y ago
  Now I'm tempted to learn morse so I can have a embedded device blink an LED at me to give me weather/news/time notifications.
- ggerganov 5y ago
  Decoding visual Morse code sounds like a fun project to try - will give it a thought!

imvetri 5y ago

Thanks for sharing!

miles 5y ago

Thanks for crafting and sharing this. Relatedly, I’m still using Morsebord[1] for easy, fast, single-thumb typing in iOS 14, though it has long been abandoned and removed from the App Store. [1] https://appadvice.com/app/morseboard/927529935 https://appadvice.com/app/morseboard/927529935

clueless123 5y ago

This brings nice old memories to me.. Some forty some years ago, as a kid, I wrote a morse-to-text decoder program in Basic that took it's input from the audio in port that Tandy's Model 1 had to load code from audio cassetes. Big was my surprise when the text coming out was mostly few letters long amateur radio "codes" sparkled with actual words here and there.. pretty much uninteligeble stuff. Still it was a great experience for a young kid of the time.