Pi Pico Learns Morse Code

February 10, 2026 by Al Williams 1 Comment

When [101 Things] didn’t want to copy Morse code, he decided to build a Pi Pico system to read it for him. On the face of it, this doesn’t seem particularly hard, until you look at the practical considerations. With perfectly timed dots and dashes, it would be trivial. But in real life, you get an audio signal. It has been mangled and mixed with noise and interference as it travels through the air. Then there’s the human on the other end who will rarely send at a constant speed with no errors.

Once you consider that, this becomes quite the project, indeed. The decoder captures audio via the Pi’s analog-to-digital converter. Then it resamples the input, applies an FFT, and converts the output via a complex classification pipeline that includes, among other things, Bayesian decoding. Part of the pipeline makes simple typo corrections. You can see the device do its thing in the video below.

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Morse Code For China

November 12, 2025 by Al Williams 45 Comments

It is well known that pictographic languages that use Hanzi, like Mandarin, are difficult to work with for computer input and output devices. After all, each character is a tiny picture that represents an entire word, not just a sound. But did you ever wonder how China used telegraphy? We’ll admit, we had not thought about that until we ran into [Julesy]’s video on the subject that you can watch below.

There are about 50,000 symbols, so having a bunch of dots and dashes wasn’t really practical. Even if you designed it, who could learn it? Turns out, like most languages, you only need about 10,000 words to communicate. A telegraph company in Denmark hired an astronomer who knew some Chinese and tasked him with developing the code. In a straightforward way, he decided to encode each word from a dictionary of up to 10,000 with a unique four-digit number.

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Punch Card Controlled Cyberdeck Lives In 80s Toy

July 19, 2025 by Tyler August 11 Comments

Have you ever seen a toy and said “That wants to be a deck”? [Attoparsec] did, when his eyes fell upon the Little Talking Scholar, a punch card driven toy from the 1980s. It’s now a punch card driven cyberdeck.

The punch card interface on the toy is only six bits, but sixty-four application cards are probably more than parents would have wanted to keep track of in 1989. Originally, they cued up simple matching games on an anonymous epoxy-coated microprocessor; after [Attoparsec]’s surgery, they do the same thing, cuing up custom Python applications on the Raspberry Pi Zero he’s implanted into this thing.

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Train With Morse Master

May 4, 2025 by Lewin Day 16 Comments

Morse code can be daunting to learn when you’re new to the game, particularly if you need it to pass your desired radio license. However, these days, there are a great many tools to aid in the learning process. A good example is the Morse Master from [Arnov Sharma].

The Morse Master is a translator for Morse code, which works in two ways. You can access it via a web app, and type in regular letters which it then flashes out as code on its in-built LEDs. Alternatively, you can enter Morse manually using the physical key, and the results will be displayed on the web app. The Morse key itself is built into the enclosure using 3D printed components paired with a Cherry-style keyboard switch. It’s perhaps not the ideal solution for fast keying, with its limited rebound, but it’s a quick and easy way to make a functional key for practice purposes. If you want to go faster, though, you might want to upgrade to something more capable. We’d also love to see a buzzer added, since Morse is very much intended as an auditory method of communication.

We’ve seen some other great Morse code trainers before, too. If you’ve trained yourself in this method of communication, don’t hesitate to share your own learning tips below.

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Do You Know Vail Code?

December 27, 2024 by Al Williams 27 Comments

We talk about Morse code, named after its inventor, Samuel Morse. However, maybe we should call it Vail code after Alfred Vail, who may be its real inventor. Haven’t heard of him? You aren’t alone. Yet he was behind the first telegraph key and improved other parts of the fledgling telegraph system.

The story starts in 1837 when Vail visited his old school, New York University, and attended one of Morse’s early telegraph experiments. His family owned Speedwell Ironworks, and he was an experienced machinist. Sensing an opportunity, he arranged with Morse to take a 25% interest in the technology, and in return, Vail would produce the necessary devices at the Ironworks. Vail split his interest with his brother George.

By 1838, a two-mile cable carried a signal from the Speedwell Ironworks. Morse and Vail demonstrated the system to President Van Buren and members of Congress. In 1844, Congress awarded Morse $30,000 to build a line from Washington to Baltimore. That was the same year Morse sent the famous message “What Hath God Wrought?” Who received and responded to that message? Alfred Vail.

The Original Telegraph

Telegraphs were first proposed in the late 1700s, using 26 wires, one for each letter of the alphabet. Later improvements by Wheatstone and Cooke reduced the number of wires to five, but that still wasn’t very practical.

Samuel Morse, an artist by trade, was convinced he could reduce the number of wires to one. By 1832, he had a crude prototype using a homemade battery and a relatively weak Sturgeon electromagnet.

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The World Morse Code Championship

December 17, 2024 by Al Williams 54 Comments

If you were in Tunisia in October, you might have caught some of the Morse Code championships this year. If you didn’t make it, you could catch the BBC’s documentary about the event, and you might be surprised at some of the details. For example, you probably think sending and receiving Morse code is only for the elderly. Yet the defending champion is 13 years old.

Teams from around the world participated. There was stiff competition from Russia, Japan, Kuwait, and Romania. However, for some reason, Belarus wins “almost every time.” Many Eastern European countries have children’s clubs that teach code. Russia and Belarus have government-sponsored teams.

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The Morse Quest game in semi-darkness to show off the dit-dahing light.

2024 Tiny Games Contest: Morse Quest Goes Where You Do

September 2, 2024 by Kristina Panos 11 Comments

Do you know Morse code already? Or are you maybe trying to learn so you can be an old school ham? Either way, you could have a lot of fun with [felix]’s great little entry into the 2024 Tiny Games Contest — Morse Quest.

This minimalist text-based adventure game is played entirely in Morse code. That is, the story line, all the clues, and the challenges along the way are presented by a blinking LED. In turn, commands like LOOK, TAKE, and INVENTORY are entered with the slim key on the lower right side. A wee potentiometer allows the player to adjust the blink rate of the LED, so it’s fun for all experience levels. Of course, one could always keep a Morse chart handy.

The brains of this operation is an Arduino Nano, and there’s really not much more to the BOM than that. It runs on a 9 V, so theoretically it could be taken anywhere you want to escape reality for a while. Be sure to check out the demo video after the break.

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