code-smore

This is a morse code practice tool.

Read the blog article introduction by WA7PGE.

Install

Download the latest release for your platform.

Or install via cargo (crates.io/crates/code-smore):

$ cargo install code-smore

Usage

code-smore is a CLI program to run in your terminal (command window):

$ code-smore
Usage: code-smore [OPTIONS] [COMMAND]

Commands:
  fecr-quiz   Start the Fast Enough Character Recognition quiz
  test-sound  Test that sound is working
  read        Read text from stdin and output it as morse code
  listen      listen to morse code from a file or audio device and output it
  help        Print this message or the help of the given subcommand(s)

Options:
      --dot <DOT_DURATION>  Sets the dot duration in milliseconds [default: 60]
      --wpm <WPM>           Sets the speed in words per minute [default: 20]
      --tone <TONE_FREQ>    Sets the tone frequency in Hz [default: 440.0]
      --text                Output text rather than sound
      --sound               Output sound in addition to the --text option
  -h, --help                Print help
  -V, --version             Print version

Note that --dot and --wpm are mutually exclusive, you may only set one or the other.

Test sound

To test that your sound device is working, run this command:

$ code-smore test-sound

You should hear an example 42s transmission at 20 WPM.

Fast Enough Character Recognition quiz

The FECR quiz will examine your skills at recognizing single characters from the given character set (the alphanumeric set is used by default if not provided).

Before you begin the quiz you may want to evaluate your baseline keyboard skills. The fecr-quiz provides an option to measure your keyboard reaction time from visual stimuli:

$ code-smore fecr-quiz -B
Your calibrated baseline score is: 610
Provide this score as your baseline to the FECR quiz

Run the FECR quiz by providing the set of characters you want to quiz (e.g., aeiou.) and your personal baseline calibration value (e.g., 610):

$ code-smore fecr-quiz -b 610 -c aeiou

If you choose not to provide a personal baseline value, the default of 500 milliseconds will be used.

Another technique for evaluating your baseline reaction time is to use a simplified fecr-quiz which finds your reaction time to the simplest Morse code letters, E and T.

$ code-smore fecr-quiz -b 0 -c ET --trials 8 --random

The quiz supports these optional named arguments:

  -c, --characters <characters>  Character set to shuffle/randomize for the quiz [default: ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ1234567890]
  -b, --baseline <baseline>      The baseline keyboard input latency in milliseconds [default: 500]
      --random    True randomization of characters (not just shuffled)
      --trials <trials>          [default: 26]
      --text                     Output text (cheat)

Read and encode from stdin

You can send text to have it encoded into morse code:

To encode plain text and play back morse code as sound:

$ echo "Hello World" | code-smore read

To encode plain text to morse code text (no sound):

$ echo "Hello World" | code-smore read --text
.... . .-.. .-.. --- / .-- --- .-. .-.. -..

To encode plain text and output morse code text and sound:

$ echo "Hello World" | code-smore read --text --sound

To read plain text interactively and output morse code and sound:

$ code-smore read --text --sound
## Type some text and it will be output as morse code.
## You may also pipe text to this same command.
## Press Enter after each line.
## When done, press Ctrl-D to exit.
Hello World

Encode text and playback as separate steps in a pipeline, playback at 10WPM:

## --morse expects text to already be morse encoded:
$ echo "Hello World" | code-smore read --text | code-smore read --morse --wpm 10

Listen and decode audio

Note: This feature is supported on Linux pipewire enabled systems only.

code-smore can listen to the other programs running on your computer and can decode morse code audio.

code-smore listen --wpm 20

code-smore will listen to the monitor of your default sound device in pipewire. Use the --wpm argument to specify the expected rate of transmission. There is some leeway here so it does not need to be exact.

Tab completion

To install tab completion support, put this in your ~/.bashrc (assuming you use Bash):

### Bash completion for code-smore (Put this in ~/.bashrc)
source <(code-smore completions bash)

If you don't like to type out the full name code-smore, you can make a shorter alias (h), as well as enable tab completion for the alias (h):

### Alias code-smore as h (Put this in ~/.bashrc):
alias h=code-smore
complete -F _code-smore -o bashdefault -o default h

Completion for Zsh and/or Fish has also been implemented, but the author has not tested this:

### Zsh completion for code-smore (Put this in ~/.zshrc):
autoload -U compinit; compinit; source <(code-smore completions zsh)

### Fish completion for code-smore (Put this in ~/.config/fish/config.fish):
code-smore completions fish | source

Development

See DEVELOPMENT.md