User name:
Password:

Forgot password? - Sign up

biggus cinghiale cipher1978 climb7 dbaker97015 DJ1GS DL7TBR dziobak ea7iyf emura F4DBC F4IAA f5efk HB9HGW IU2SNX ja8rjd ji1lyd JK1NKB km6hbh Magtour mapleice OE3TBU ofe p3 parinko SA7MHS schlcwo99 SP9SNC test YO3HEX

I have been given an old "straight" key.
Does anyone know how I can connect it to a USB port on my PC and use it to practise morse?

David OZDKM

Keep it simple!

put the key in series with a battery and a buzzer.

Or take a carbonmicrophone put it against a telephone, such that maximum of the sound that the telephone produces enters in the microphone.

Everything in series: battery, key, microphone and telephone. The carbon microphone is an amplifying transducer so that will work.

No computer needed.

Same question but for an iambic/paddle key. Purpose, that the computer is checking what and how I am doing. Reading text back and so on.

Anyone knows software or a solution for this ?

You need a practice oscillator (*not* a buzzer) or a keyer if you want to use a paddle. Then feed the audio into your PC soundcard and run any of the morse "reader" programs to be found via Google.

Colin, The reader programs are designed such that the worst possible code (dashes 2.001 dit en dots 1.9999 dit) is still decoded correct.

Using a decoding program to check your fist is hence not advisable.

On my website www.xs4all.nl/~pa0wv/zelfbouw.html you will find the "fistmeter" special designed for measuring the difference between handkeying and machine generated morse code.

Other designs are "the BugMaster" that requires that you send with your paddles errorless the quick brown fox.. you can start all over again in case of error, and at the end het tells you what your average wordspace and average letterspace was. It adapts to your speed after a string of dits to start with.

Or "SynchroSeiner" You choose a speed and he starts sending a pangram, a sentence with all characters a..z, such as the quick brown fox, and you have to follow synchrone with your straight key. When you are to early of too late with any start or end of any dot or dash the side tone is different in frequency. And you collect 1 penalty point per millisecond errortime, displayed on the LCD.
Also the total errortime is dispalayed as percentage of the total mark time of the transmission.

HI, im using cw com. ive got a usb to rs232 adapter, my keys wired across pin 4 & 6 on the 9 pin.
http://www.mrx.com.au/d_cwcom.htm
its very good and give you text as well as morse.
Im on some times as SOE MARK.
Its got 1000 seperate channels.
hope this is helpfull.
Mark