Slashdot Mirror
Morse Code on Cell Phones?
An anonymous reader writes "In a recent showdown, veteran Morse coders were able to send SMS messages faster via Morse than the fastest thumb-typists. What about embedding support for Morse code directly into handsets? This article on O'Reilly Network floats the idea of using Morse code to compose text messages, as well as tapping commands (i.e. answer call, forward to voice mail, etc) in hands-free mode by tapping on the handset case."
Having already posted one dupe today, timothy pulls off the amazing feat of posting a dupe of a dupe!
It's a dupe followed by a dupe-dupe!
What do you call that?
This is a semi-http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/06/03/0 525225&tid=133&tid=215">dup. This submission has an article containing a reference to the material that Jay Leno stole, plus an unnecessary commentary on O'Reilly Developer Weblogs that provides no revolutionary thought and hardly any intellectual merit
/ 29/0212242&tid=232&tid=14">8 hours a part.
/. can fire http://www.monkey.org/~timothy/">this poor fellow and hire me for the seemingly cush job of /. editor? I promise to never dup! (or semi-dup in this case)
At least this time Timothy's dup and its original post were more than http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/06
I'm not trying to be mean here, but is there anyway
Falun Dafa is good!
While I can follow your reasoning, it is also not completely fair:
- transmitting morse code is done using the equipment the guy used, transmitting text messages is done using the equipment the boy used. What you are saying is "cars would be not faster than bicycles, if it weren't for the combustion engines".
- it is only your assumption that the morse guy wouldn't have won using the keypad. Maybe yes, maybe no. Not very scientific either.
- No-one is saying this was a scientific endeavour. Was Leno nominated for the Nobel prize or so?
So really you're just agreeing with the results of the test - which is that the best designed Morse code equipment is superior to text messaging on a numeric keypad. It doesn't require someone with 80 years of practice, either - just enough. I used to have an interest in ham radio when I was a kid, and I have seen the advanced key switches myself. Amazing stuff.
So we have Morse code, which works now and could be fitted to a phone. You have two thumbs and, as you pointed out, two big buttons; fit one to be the dot, one to be the dash. There you go. Ergonomic, really hard to make a mistake (assuming you know which hand is which), and already tried-and-true. No need to reinvent the wheel.
I don't think this is a case to cry foul, but to appreciate a superior message-sending format. Morse code can be learned relatively quickly, actually - within a week, if you really want to. When you get right down to it, it's just a bunch of ones and zeroes. You would think Slashdot people would appreciate that. )
As far as other technologies go, such as type-ahead find, etc, a japanese person would trump someone using the alphabet because they use a phonetic system that combines a consonant and vowel in every symbol, giving them a two-for-one deal. Combined with the fact that most nouns involve only two kanji and a far simpler grammatical structure and now you know why everyone in Japan emails via their cell, even with the limited keypad. Trust me, Japanese is a lot harder to learn than Morse.
"Give a man fire, and he'll be warm for a day; set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life
The two hams who won are certainly not the fastest morse operators. They were sending at less than 40 WpM / 200 LpM, whereas most good operators can send around 50 to 60 WpM. Probably they kept it so slow because the audience wouldn't have believed it was morse code if they went to their full speed.
As an example, this is a sample of 60 WpM: click.
Furthermore good morse equipment doesn't have to be expensive; I am using this homebrew sensor keyer for the last 7 years now and I am able to send over 50 WpM with it. Estimated cost less than $20...
After watching the Jay Leno episode I was about to start writing a program to do that on my 6600, luckily I did some research before starting and found this with the source included!
You write the sms in morse and it converts and sends it as a regular sms.
You can use the joystick on the phone (left for dot and right for dash) so you have your finger on one button all the time!
Also I found this page for learning morse code ...
Nice analysis, however morse code is in fact faster since it is very easy to provide a -natural- way for inputing morse code on the phone almost as fast as the morse equipment!
t exter.html
...
In fact you provide a way in your own comment!
> the reason morse is as fast as it is is because you hardly have to move your finger at all.
That's why typing SMS using this program for morse code IS ACTUALLY FASTER.
http://laivakoira.typepad.com/blog/2005/05/morse_
You use the keypad on the phone to type the dit and dah (left, right) and click to seperate letters/words. Try it if you have access to a symbian phone!
Even if you don't know morse code by heart.
Write a message to send by sms, look up the morse equivalent and write it down too.
Try to input the words as sms, now try the dots and dashes (follow what you have on the paper without thinking, left for dot, right for dash, click to separate letters, another click to separate words)
So if you know morse code it is actually faster than sms! Now learning it is a whole other issue http://www.learnmorsecode.com/.
"The supposed "showdown" on Jay Leno was a highly unscientific and inaccurate test which pitted the world's fasted morse coder using very expensive morse equipment against a teenager using a cheap cell phone with a membrane keypad."
Where the heck did you get this? I watched the video, and at no point were the morse guys introduced as the "world's fastest" anything. And honestly, I know morse, I know a lot of old-school Ham radio guys, and those guys on Leno weren't sending at any particularly blazing rate of speed. It sounded like 20-30 WPM, give or take. There are guys out there who can copy at nearly twice that rate.
"If the pro-morser had been forced to enter morse on a phone keypad instead of his $200 morsing 'bug' then I'm pretty sure he wouldn't have won."
IIRC, the guys in the video were using a straight key, not a "bug". Nevertheless, you're kidding yourself if you think the type of key being used gave them an unfair advantage. What gave them an advantage is the fact that morse requires one button, and therefore can be sent without even looking at the keys. Even the best telephone keypad requires a certain amount of delay while switching buttons....
Let's try not to let fact interfere with our speculation here, OK?
Electronic morse keyers are very simple. All you need is one relatively simple integrated circuit (see The History of Curtis Keyers) and a switch or two. For a cell phone, the IC could be modified to generate ASCII characters for the SMS message while sending dots and dashes to the phone's speaker. If the phone could be attached to the user's arm or leg, it would provide a base for the keyer. The user could then use his free hand to operate the keyer. A pair of pressure sensitive panels on the left and right sides of the phone, near the bottom, would be ideal.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Huh?
"worlds fastest morse coder"? nope. Not hardly. Just an experienced operator sending at less than 30 words a minute. Fast for morse code is 60 WPM.
"very expensive morse equipment"? uhhh, no. Not really. They used a cheap "Bencher" paddle, $100, not any "$200 morsing bug"...
Morse is the first and oldest digital transmission mode that I am aware of. The cell phone text message is also ultimately a digital transmission mode.
Personally, I hate text messaging because of the clunky input method. The idea that perhaps there is a better way to enter text into a phone is intrigueing. Also the idea that the phone could output the text message as morse code is interesting.
How many people are aware that when their Nokia sends "dah dah dah dit dit dah dah dah" it is in fact sending "SMS" in morse to indicate Short Message System? I hear it all the time, and nobody knows why it beeps like that!
there are 3 kinds of people:
* those who can count
* those who can't
The operators have already stated elsewhere (I don't have a link handy, sorry) that they were limited in speed because the reciever couldn't use a typewriter to write down the code he was recieving...which would be much quicker. So they were actually hampered by is writing with a pencil speed.
The morse operators were also tapping out the entire message, while the text-messenger guys were using abbreviations. Anyone that has sat in on a CW QSO would know that operators use a TON of abbreviations to keep the code quick.
And it's true, CW equipment doesn't have to be expensive at all. In fact, to get on the HF bands it's probably one of the cheapest part of the hobby, especially if you're looking to do QRP which is running at 5w or less.
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
It takes several keypresses to send a single character in morse
True, but so it also does using a telephone keyboard, where, depending on the protocol used, it takes one to three keypresses (and sometimes a short wait) to send a single character. It would be a simple matter to set up the keyboard with two buttons, one for dit and one for dah, just like a paddle would be configured. (Some ham rigs, including the cute little Elecraft KX1 allow you to do this with the front panel buttons if you don't happen to have a key handy.) Add an iambic keyer (which alternates between dit and dah when both levers are pressed simultaneously -- a highly efficient way of sending at high speed. More on this here [27k PDF] ) and you can send multi-element characters with one or two keypresses. Example: the letter Y is dah-di-dah-dah. You hold the dah, then tap the dit once, and keep holding dah until the last dah is sent. The keyer forms the character for you. Result: you only need two presses instead of four. In the case of our telephone handset, you have to press the 9 button three times to send a Y (W..X..Y). Result: With Morse, 33% fewer keystrokes for that character. Want another example? E, the most common letter. Morse: dit. Phone: 33. 50% fewer with Morse!
Ergonomically, you could even set it up so that the buttons you find on the outside edges of the handset (like on some Motorola phones) are your keying buttons so there would be no need to locate the right keys on the keypad.
it takes ages to learn morse
Not really. One can become proficient at about 5 words per minute in just a few weeks or even shorter if you work at it. The average person needs about 30 hours of study - about a half hour twice a day for a month. I've taught Morse to the level of proficiency needed to obtain an Amateur license in about six weeks.
morse code (designed for carrier wave)
Not really - it was originally designed for use on a DC wire circuit, where the key opening and closing would click a sounder at the other end. It was designed, and works, anywhere you can signal with an on-off state, such as signal lights on Navy ships or even conceivably smoke signals. It is said that Thomas Edison's wife communicated with him after he became deaf by tapping out Morse on his knee. Actually, its first use in radio was to key a spark generator, which produced not a carrier wave but a broad spectrum of noise. (Modern Morse radio transmission only occupies a few tens of Hertz bandwidth, making it one of the most spectrum-efficient forms of communication in existence.)
Actually, this is an idea I've had for some time, after fumbling around trying to compose a SMS message while walking through the mall, and got to thinking that if only you could use Morse to enter the message, it would be a lot easier (for me, anyway).