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Morse Code Translator
- sdh9 1y agoIt's very active in the amateur radio community.
- spogbiper 1y ago"very" might be an overstatement. but it does exist there
- boxerbomb 1y agoIn the 2024 field day contest that lasts 24 hours, 490,813 Morse code contacts were made between participants. Just turning on my radio now I heard more than 10 conversations in Morse happening and that was just on one of the 10 popular frequency bands.
- spogbiper 1y ago31,628 people participated in field day 2024. google says there are ~750,000 amateur radio licenses in the US and ~3 million world wide. my experience with field day is that it attracts the most dedicated subset of radio amateurs, a group which (also in my experience) vastly over represents cw users. combined with the point of field day being to make as many contacts as possible, combined with cw being one of if not the best way to make difficult and long distant contacts.. can you see why i doubt field day results are an accurate representation of normal, average amateur radio? i have attended club meetings and activities, hamfests local and around the US, participated in online forums etc for many years. morse code isn't a big topic anywhere outside of very specialized contexts, such as field day and qrp operation.
- tarxvf 1y agoI don't think it's at risk of being overstatement. CW bands are more crowded than ever before, because there are more CW ops than ever before. This is, I think, because it's easier to learn than ever, ham radio equipment is more capable for a cheaper (adjusted) price, and ham radio has grown tremendously worldwide due to all barriers being lowered a bit. CW is very popular, especially given all the other options that are easier. That it's a smaller percentage of hams that know CW than before is another way of saying ham radio has expanded well beyond CW and the population has grown. But if you have a finite resource (bandwidth) and it's in significantly more demand than ever before, it's a hard argument to suggest that it's not 'very' active.
- renehsz 1y agoOn the surface, it seems like CW usage should be in a decline because 1) CW is no longer required to get a license in most countries and 2) digital modes like FT8 are clearly superior at very low signal-to-noise ratios. But the bands tell the opposite story, as crowded as they often are. I think the primary reason to use CW these days is because it's fun, it feels like you're really doing something and not just delegating the whole task to the computer, and CW is definitely far better than SSB for DX at low, possibly QRP, power.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- krunck 1y ago-.-- . ...
- lagniappe 1y agoplenty of cw usage in the radio world
- beardyw 1y ago-.-- . ...
- silicon5 1y agoNote to others: This comment made more sense when the title was "Does anyone still use Morse code?"
- itsdrewmiller 1y agoLike 1/3 of all Escape Rooms use it.
- 0xdeadbeefbabe 1y agoPeople who use it call it CW https://longislandcwclub.org/ https://longislandcwclub.org/
- xanderlewis 1y agoIn the amateur radio community, yes. You probably know this, but for those who might not: CW isn’t totally synonymous with Morse code. Morse is the encoding scheme; CW is one particular method of transmission. You could instead flash a light source, or you could use FM radio, or… I don’t know… use smoke signals! CW (‘continuous wave’) just means ‘pulsing a carrier wave on and off’.
- xanderlewis 1y agoCome to think of it, a good example of the distinction are the NDBs (non-directional beacons) that aircraft use for navigation. They transmit, repeatedly, an identifier in Morse code, but the signal is an audio range frequency (somewhere around 500Hz) amplitude modulated onto a (radio frequency) carrier rather than being the carrier itself being pulsed. One difference is that, if you tune an ordinary AM radio to the carrier frequency, in the CW case you’d hear nothing. In this case, you’d hear the tone as intended.
- shinybrick 1y agoThe Wordle spinoff Morsle (https://morsle.fun/ https://morsle.fun/) inspired me to learn Morse this year. It's been surprisingly enjoyable listening exercise.
- Hnrobert42 1y agoMan. That looks pretty fun. I can't seem to get it to work on my iPhone in several different browsers. The sound won't play. Am I the only one that can't get it working on mobile?
- Barbing 1y agoUnsilence the ringer …kinda an unfortunate answer to have to give :) well they call it Silent Mode which makes it a bit better although it’s inconsistent … I digress
- 31337Logic 1y agoHammie here.
- sciencesama 1y agoEvery ham radio operator kind of aspires to use it regularly!
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- roggenbuck 1y agoYea, it's fun to know and it can be useful from time to time. I know the alphabet but cannot copy very fast at all.
- rnoorda 1y agoI've always wanted to make a messaging app that would vibrate in Morse code when you get a message. I love the idea of feeling a message in my pocket and 'reading' it without looking, but I'm also not great at deciphering it, so it wouldn't get much use.
- colanderman 1y agoOh I really like this idea! If you do make this please post it here. This would be a great learning tool for those of us who are trying to learn it also.
- hx8 1y agoI have a feeling this app would greatly increase the number of phantom vibrations I experience.
- amflare 1y agoMany years ago when I had an iphone I would set text vibrations to be the morse code of the first letter of someone's name so I knew who messaged me without looking. That's the only feature I still miss to this day with my android.
- dcminter 1y agoThat would be fun. I think a lot of non-tech people didn't realise that the old Nokia default text message notification was the morse for S.M.S. (short message service). That was a worryingly long time ago though.
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- eihli 1y agoI've been learning it, mostly as a fun hobby. I journal a little bit about my experience here: https://owoga.com/posts/2025-03-18-learning-morse-code/ https://owoga.com/posts/2025-03-18-learning-morse-code/ I've been a licensed HAM for a while, but what actually prompted me to start learning Morse code was when I was troubleshooting some hardware that only had a blinking light to communicate back to me. Instead or print statements, I started using blinks to tell me what was happening. I realized it would be so much faster if I knew Morse code. LICW is a great place to learn. But I also recently discovered https://morsecode.world/ https://morsecode.world/ and really like it.
- MonkeyIsNull 1y agoThis is comment I was looking for. Can't wait to read about your learning experience and thanks for the link to morsecode.world
- anonymousiam 1y agoI got my ham license before the "no code" license became a thing. I missed my "Extra" CW test by one point and never tried again, which is sorta cool, because the "Advanced" class is now gone, so I'm keeping mine. I've got a lot of friends who are avid CW users. One friend used to do CW in his car, which is also very cool. I learned CW with SuperMorse (on DOS). I went from no skills to passing the General/Advanced in two weeks. It was a fun and easy way to learn.
- scifi 1y agoI work in tech for a school district. Just the other day, a request came in to unblock a Morse code learning website. Initially I was hesitant as, I was concerned kids could harass one another using codes. I was surprised to find a nicely built educational site- https://morsefree.com/ https://morsefree.com/
- cortesoft 1y agoI am not sure I would worry much about harassment via Morse code. It wouldn't be a source of new bullying in the way a social media site would be, so I can't imagine how it could make anything worse
- jasonjayr 1y agoI've seen a story of HS kids 'cheating' by having one kid brodacast test answers via tapping their pencil, which worked until the teacher who knew Morse code realized what was going on and put a stop to it.
- gwbas1c 1y agoGotta give the kids credit for working so hard to learn a skill like that.
- dghlsakjg 1y agoThat’s likely apocryphal. Morse requires you to know when the tone both starts and stops in order to differentiate a ‘dah’ from a break indicating a new letter or word or even just a ‘dit’. Tapping a pencil only gives you the start of a tone since the pencil lift is silent. There is no real way to distinguish between a short tone and a pause (letter e) and a long tone (letter t) if you don’t know when the tone ends and a pause begins. The same trope is shown in movies. You cannot tap Morse code if the recipient cannot hear when the tap ends. In other words, the receiver has no way of knowing whether you sent an e or t without there being a signal that the pencil has lifted. Note that e or t can be substituted for any other number of paired letters.
- msarrel 1y agoMe and the other nerds used to send each other notes written in Morse code in high school. This site is timely. Just the other day I turned on the emergency setting on my flashlight and thought oh that's an interesting pattern. Why would it flash three long then three short then three long? About 30 seconds later I realized that I had forgotten an entire alphabet.
- cortesoft 1y agoSOS is the only Morse code I still remember. One of my early coding projects was a Morse code transcriber.
- amarant 1y agoMy old Nokia phone had a SMS ringtone that spelled out "SMS" in morse. It's quite similar to SOS, and now I don't know which is which
- ale42 1y agoA proper SOS should be transmitted without breaks (and is therefore sometimes displayed as "SOS" with a bar on the top). ___ SOS (emergency call) = ...---... SMS = ... -- ... SOS (three letters) = ... --- ...
- amarant 1y agoYeah I think my Nokia skipped the pauses, making it sound more similar to the proper SOS signal. But it only had the 2 long notes instead of three, obviously.
- notherhack 1y agoOSO? Maybe it was a Spanish flashlight warning of a bear nearby? ;)
- fortran77 1y agoYes! I love Morse. I copy in my head and I send with an Iambic paddle and straight key. I like to be able to build the smallest possible radios--and nothing's simpler than a CW transmitter. I have a 5 watt transceiver (based on a Si48xx rx chip) that fits in an altoid tin I use when I travel. Hang a wire off the hotel balcony (I have a mini EFHW tuner, too) and start making contacts. I've been an "extra" since 1977, so we had to learn code back then. I also have the (now-obsolete) first class radiotelegraph licence where I had to copy code at an FCC field office at 25 WPM for 5 minutes in order to pass....
- zikduruqe 1y agoI have my 20 WPM Extra Class. I still love to pound brass once in a while on a QRP rig under the absolute worst conditions to pull out some weak signal stuff. Back when I was really active, I had an iambic key in my truck and would make QSO's mobile.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- boilerupnc 1y agoRelated: The book "The Victorian Internet" [0] by Tom Standage was very interesting. I never realized how many social things that were impacted by the broad use of the telegraph would have future analogs during the dotcom age. Highly recommend! "For centuries people communicated across distances only as quickly as the fastest ship or horse could travel. Generations of innovators tried and failed to develop speedier messaging devices. But in the mid-1800s, a few extraordinary pioneers at last succeeded. Their invention--the electric telegraph--shrank the world more quickly than ever before.A colorful tale of scientific discovery and technological cunning, The Victorian Internet tells the story of the telegraph's creation and remarkable impact, and of the visionaries, oddballs, and eccentrics who pioneered it. By 1865 telegraph cables spanned continents and oceans, revolutionizing the ways countries dealt with one another. The telegraph gave rise to creative business practices and new forms of crime. Romances blossomed over the wires. Secret codes were devised by some users, and cracked by others. The benefits of the network were relentlessly hyped by its advocates and dismissed by its skeptics. And attitudes toward everything from news gathering to war had to be completely rethought.The telegraph unleashed the greatest revolution in communications since the development of the printing press. Its saga offers many parallels to that of the Internet in our own time--and is a fascinating episode in the history of technology." [0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28949978 https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28949978
- 7373737373 1y agoOn http://websdr.ewi.utwente.nl:8901/ http://websdr.ewi.utwente.nl:8901/ you can still see and listen to people using Morse code live in the purple amateur radio bands, usually on the lower frequencies (left part of the purple ranges)
- 7373737373 1y agocorrection: the green, not the purple ones
- arnaudsm 1y agoAs a kid I didn't have a phone, but my parents gave me a cheap iPod Nano. I flashed a custom OS on it (RockBox), which used Morse code as the primary input, since iPods only have a single button. Programming in lua and writing my diary in Morse code on this microscopic device was a lot of fun. Morse was a clever way to bypass limitations, which is the definition of hacking itself.
- teddyh 1y agoThe time has apparently come for yet another Unix command line program to be turned into a huge unnecessary web site. This time it’s “morse”: <https://manpages.debian.org/jump?q=bcd https://manpages.debian.org/jump?q=bcd>
- notherhack 1y agoLong ago at a startup, In-System Design, I was on a team that made one of the first USB-to-ATA mass storage adapter chips. Small company, having fun, one of us put in an easter egg so that when the drive was plugged in and before the OS enumerated it the drive activity light would blink our team cheer, "ISD rocks!", in morse. He even added a test to make sure it worked in verilog simulation. The chip was fairly successful and years later someone out in the world noticed the funny blinking on their retail USB drive that used it and they figured it out. They wrote a letter to the editor of Byte or Dr. Dobbs or something, wondering what the message "Sis you rock!" meant. Twisted sister fan, maybe? We saw the letter in the magazine and were chuffed that our easter egg had hatched but... It turns out the designer had typoed the table of ASCII-to-morse values and dot/dash timing he used to build the messaging circuit, so it really was saying "Sis you rock!". And because he also wrote the test it didn't catch the error. Doh!
- leugim 1y agoRelated: Show HN: I Built a Telegraph Simulator https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43260251 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43260251
- firesteelrain 1y agoWe sold badges at DEFCON31 that had a Morse code blinking option. Have to go back and look at the code to remember if it just flashed DEFCON or something else We also had an option to connect up via serial and it would dump DEFCON or our team name at the terminal and we had games on the terminal. Amongst other things our badge did, it was a great value for $20
- _whiteCaps_ 1y agoWhile we're on the topic, I wrote a little Python script that generates Morse Code 'palindromes'. Ie playing a word backwards results in another word. The most interesting one I found is TREVOR / ROBERT Other notable mentions: fins / sail urea / nerd waits / sting loops / spoof queer / reedy rebel / fever and the longest one I found: footstool / footstool
- ryancnelson 1y agois anyone going to point out that the linked website is absolute AI-generated ad-filled slop? or is this just a comments thread starter for "hey, morse code, right?"
- nickcw 1y agoOn my phone at least, the morse code audio is very wrong. The spacing between the elements is too long, so H sounds like EEEE etc.
- 3x35r22m4u 1y agoI've been waiting for maybe some 15 years for some statistical method or (more recently) AI model able to decode live Morse Code in HF radio (CW as ham radio operators usually refer to it). This has been challenging not only because radio transmissions SNR is always changing and, just like handwriting, each operator sends Morse in its personal way (unless, of course, they use a PC keyer).