Morse Code Clock For Training Hams

March 1, 2023 by 13 Comments

It might seem antiquated, but Morse code still has a number of advantages compared to other modes of communication, especially over radio waves. It’s low bandwidth compared to voice or even text, and can be discerned against background noise even at extremely low signal strengths. Not every regulatory agency requires amateur operators to learn Morse any more, but for those that do it can be a challenge, so [Cristiano Monteiro] built this clock to help get some practice.

The project is based around his favorite microcontroller, the PIC16F1827, and uses a DS1307 to keep track of time. A single RGB LED at the top of the project enclosure flashes the codes for hours in blue and minutes in red at the beginning of every minute, and in between flashes green for each second.

Another design goal of this build was to have it operate with as little power as possible, so with a TP4056 control board, single lithium 18650 battery, and some code optimization, [Cristiano] believes he can get around 60 days of operation between charges.

For a project to help an aspiring radio operator learn Morse, a simple build like this can go a long way. For anyone else looking to build something similar we’d note that the DS1307 has a tendency to drift fairly quickly, and something like a DS3231 or even this similar Morse code clock which uses NTP would go a long way to keeping more accurate time.

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Translating And Broadcasting Spoken Morse Code

January 24, 2023 by 24 Comments

When the first radios and telegraph lines were put into service, essentially the only way to communicate was to use Morse code. The first transmitters had extremely inefficient designs by today’s standards, so this was more a practical limitation than a choice. As the technology evolved there became less and less reason to use Morse to communicate, but plenty of amateur radio operators still use this mode including [Kevin] aka [KB9RLW] who has built a circuit which can translate spoken Morse code into a broadcasted Morse radio signal.

The circuit works by feeding the signal from a microphone into an Arduino. The Arduino listens for a certain threshold and keys the radio when it detects a word being spoken. Radio operators use the words “dit” and “dah” for dots and dashes respectively, and the Arduino isn’t really translating the words so much as it is sending a signal for the duration of however long each word takes to say. The software for the Arduino is provided on the project’s GitHub page as well, and uses a number of approaches to make sure the keyed signal is as clean as possible.

[Kevin] mentions that this device could be used by anyone who wishes to operate a radio in this mode who might have difficulty using a traditional Morse key and who doesn’t want to retrain their brain to use other available equipment like a puff straw or a foot key. The circuit is remarkably straightforward for what it does, and in the video below it seems [Kevin] is having a blast using it. If you’re still looking to learn to “speak” Morse code, though, take a look at this guide which goes into detail about it.

Thanks to [Dragan] for the tip!

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BBC Micro:bit Reads Morse Code With MakeCode

October 6, 2021 by 12 Comments

We always have mixed feelings about the drag-and-drop programming languages. But we were impressed with [SirDan’s] Morse code decoder built with the graphical MakeCode. Granted, it is reading 5 element groups from a button on the BBC micro:bit and not worrying about details such as intercharacter or interelement spacing or word spacing. But it is still a nice demo for MakeCode.

Interestingly, the online editor for MakeCode can apparently simulate well enough to test the program. However, [SirDan] only provides the hex file so we couldn’t try it out. There is a screenshot of the visual code, but you’d have to work out the part that didn’t fit on the screenshot (the data arrays are pretty long).

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This Week In Security: Morse Code Malware, Literal And Figurative Watering Holes, And More

February 12, 2021 by 6 Comments

Code obfuscation has been around for a long time. The obfuscated C contest first ran way back in 1984, but there are examples of natural language obfuscation from way earlier in history. Namely Cockney rhyming slang, like saying “Lady from Bristol” instead of “pistol” or “lump of lead” instead of “head”. It’s speculated that Cockney was originally used to allow the criminal class to have conversations without tipping off police.

Code obfuscation in malware serves a similar purpose — hiding from security devices and applications. There are known code snippets and blacklisted IP addresses that anti-malware software scans for. If that known bad code can be successfully obfuscated, it can avoid detection. This is a bit of a constant game of cat-and-mouse, as the deobfuscation code itself eventually makes the blacklist. This leads to new obfuscation techniques, sometimes quite off the wall. Well this week, I found a humdinger of an oddball approach. Morse Code.

Yep, dots and dashes. The whole attack goes like this. You receive an email, claiming to be an invoice. It’s a .xlsx.hTML file. If you don’t notice the odd file extension, and actually let it open, you’re treated to a web page. The source of that page is a very minimal JS script that consists of a morse code decoder, and a payload encoded in Morse. In this case, the payload is simply a pair of external scripts that ask for an Office 365 login. The novel aspect of this is definitely the Morse Code. Yes, our own [Danie] covered this earlier this week, but it was too good not to mention here. Continue reading “This Week In Security: Morse Code Malware, Literal And Figurative Watering Holes, And More” →

Phishing With Morse Code

February 11, 2021 by 13 Comments

All of us have seen our share of phishing emails, but there are a lot more that get caught by secure email gateways and client filters. Threat actors are constantly coming up with new ways to get past these virtual gatekeepers. [BleepingComputer] investigated a new phishing attack that used some old tricks by hiding the malicious script tags as morse code.

The phishing attack targets Microsoft account login credentials with an HTML page posing as an Excel invoice. When opened, it asks the user to re-enter their credentials before viewing the document. Some external scripts are required to render the fake invoice and login window but would be detected if the links were included normally. Instead, the actor encoded the script links using dots and dashes, for example, “.-” equals “a”. A simple function (creatively named “decodeMorse”) is used to decode and inject the scripts when it runs in the victim’s browser.

Of course, this sort of attack is easy to avoid with the basic precautions we are all familiar with, like not opening suspicious attachments and carefully inspecting URLs. The code used in this attack is simple enough to be used in a tutorial on JavaScript arrays, but it was good enough to slip past a few large company’s filters.

Phishing attacks are probably not going to stop anytime soon, so if you’re bored, you could go phishing for phishers, or write some scripts to flood them with fake information.

Speech To Morse Code, Courtesy Of Google

July 16, 2020 by 16 Comments

Google has been responsible for unleashing some pretty incredible hardware and software on the world, but they can only take partial credit for the voice to Morse code gadget that [WhiskeyTangoHotel] recently completed.

With the Google AIY Voice Bonnet, [WhiskeyTangoHotel] had everything he needed to pick up on human speech and turn that into text the Raspberry Pi can parse and act on. Usually this would get passed to some kind of virtual assistant software, but in this case, a Python script breaks the speech down into individual characters and looks up their Morse representations. All those “dits” and “dahs” are then sent to one of the Pi’s GPIO pins, to which a relay has been connected.

At this point, you’ve got an interesting little toy that can sit on your desk and turn your speech into audible Morse code as the relay clicks and clacks its way through the message. In fact, if you don’t have a ham radio license, this is probably where you should stop. But if you’ve done the appropriate paperwork to transmit over the air, the relay can be connected to a radio to actually transmit messages.

If you think giving Google access to the content of your Morse code messages is a step too far, you’ll just have to learn it yourself. It might not be necessary to get your amateur license anymore, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth knowing.

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Learning Morse Code The Ludwig Koch Way

February 21, 2020 by 54 Comments

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.

I don’t know if they still do, but some youth organizations used to promote some particularly bad ways to learn the code. The second worse way is to learn “dots and dashes” and many people did learn that way. The very worst way was using an image like the adjacent one to try to map the dots and dashes into letter shapes. This chart dates back to at least 1918 when a Girl Guides handbook printed it.

Even if you are a visual learner, this is a bad idea. The problem is, it is nearly impossible to hear sounds at 20 or 30 words per minute and map them to this visual representation. Another visual method is to use a binary tree where left branches are dots and right branches are dashes.

If you only need to master 5 words per minute to get a merit badge, you might get away with this. But for real use, 5 words a minute is very slow. For example, this sentence would take about 3 minutes to send at that speed. Just that one sentence.

So what are the better ways? Let’s take a look.

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