I Turned My Dad's 1950s Morse Key into a USB Keyboard – Album on Imgur

https://imgur.com/gallery/lNAtQ

by mikecarlton • 9 years ago

21 6 9 years ago

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lightlyused• 9 years ago

Good by carpel-tunnel, hello glass arm. Looks like a fun project.

amigoingtodie• 9 years ago

USB3? Can you tap that fast?

VladTheImplier• 9 years ago

Well, it IS definitely future proof though...

siberianbear• 9 years ago

Boy, that gave me memories of getting my novice class ham radio license. There was still a Morse code requirement at that time of five words per minute. I could barely do it after a lot of practice.

My grandfather, who had an advanced class license, could send and understand Morse code at 25 words per minute. He was really good at it. He used a fancier code key called a Vibroplex [1] that could make the dots automatically.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vibroplex

ewanm89• 9 years ago

"Converting the (VERY analogue) Morse key into a digital device was the next step."

Urm what? A morse key is either on or off, pushed or not pushed, morse code is an on-off keyed digital mode. It is not analogue under any circumstances.

danielvf• 9 years ago

A year or two ago, I started doing software for embedded hardware. It’s terrifying how many things we software developer abstract away, actually behave far more strangely in the real world.

There could be nothing simpler than a button press, right? And yet in the real world it often enough bounces on and then off several times, quickly. An the tiny on/offs themselves change voltage for tiny bits of time as the current coming through bounces off other components in its new path before settling down. There’s nothing that will shake your faith in binary logic as a simple hardware button.

I Turned My Dad's 1950s Morse Key into a USB Keyboard – Album on Imgur

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