Copasetic Flow

 You can now play the CW Simon game on your desktop with your own iambic paddles and a Halikey Serial . (We hope to have support for Halikey Midi soon.) I was a little worried that the serial version of the Halikey was going away , but I'm super-psyched to see that it's back! I'm still pretty psyched about phone keying, so expect to see more features there, and maybe some hardware as we move forward, but there are a lot of hams with iambic keys, and so, voila! The video walks through the basic process of using a Halikey with the game. If there  are any questions, suggestions, or issues, please let us know in the comments below. References More on the CW Simon game

 On Tuesday, I mentioned that I'd be adding Halikey as an iambic keyer to the CWSimon game. Iambic keying enabled by Halikey is something I've been meaning to do for a while, but each time I start, I realize I'm going to need to start with serial port signal inspections, and set the project back aside. This is the exact sort of thing vibe coding is good for, pushing through the parts of projects you don't want to bother with. So, this morning, I put ChatGPT 5.3. A few minutes and a design coversation later, ChatGPT cranked out the web page for me that you'll see in the video below. Here's the app itself if you'd like to experiment with your serial Halikey. Halikey Serial Signal Test Bench Connect to a Halikey and watch for serial control-signal changes. Each change will be logged below with the signal name and new state. Connect Halikey Disconnect Clear Log Status: Disconnected

 The 11 year-old and I played CW Simon through two airports and plane rides last night. We got a little better at sending CW, and bothered absolutely no one. Haptics rock ! But what if you'd rather practice Morse with your own set of paddles, not on a smart phone touch screen? By the way, did I mention that the smart phone easily supports 20 wpm iambic keying ? Still want your own paddles? Ok, ok, ok, ok. We're working on adding Halikey support! We've got a code basis to work from becuase there are other apps in the Project TouCans portfolio, namely the CW Fist-ogram —a tool for practicing your dit/dah timing consistency—and the inter-person, internet CW transciever . that already support Halikey. Both those tools were built for the OG serial Halikey. I was worried that device was going away and therefore was delighted this morning when I saw that the serial version will continue to be sold along with the spiffy new MIDI version of the Halikey! I perused the new User...

CW Simon: Simon, but, you know, for Morse code Remember Simon from the ’90s? The handheld game with four buttons that played a sequence you had to copy back from memory? Each round added one more step, and you kept going until you finally made a mistake. KO6BTY built a phone game, Project TouCans CW Simon , using Gas Town that does the same thing, but for Morse code. Part of the inspiration for CW Simon was W1REX telling KO6BTY and I that he’d worked on Simon 2. You can hear more about that on Rex’s episode on HRWB. Why CW Simon Exists KO6BTY found that keying CW was helping her learn Morse more quickly, but she and I didn't always have enough time to get on the air together. CW Simon grew out of that. It is a quick way to get more sending practice in, one short round at a time. CW Simon gives you a way to spend more time sending, not just listening. Long Island CW Club points out: “At least a quarter of practice should be sending.” How CW Simo...

 I made my first QSO on the Project Toucans CW practice app last week and it was DX to Brazil with  PY2UIA , Henrique. He also commented here on the blog . Henrique suggested the iambic keyer would be easier to use if its keying speed was adjustable. That hadn't occured to me since I usually use the straight/cootie key version. And, now it is! On the iambic version of the practice app, the gap+/- size adjustment has been changed to wpm+/- buttons: The keys + and - reduce the dit time, (the standardized time all the other iambic times are based on), by 5 ms, or increase by 5 ms respectively. Give the new controls a try on the iambic app , make a few QSOs of your own, and tell us what other features you’d like to see in the comments.

 We're working on a promo video for our smartphone-based CW practice app. We had great luck last week using the sora-2 app to create B-Roll footage for the Gladych Files . This week, I'm hoping to make an entire scripted trailer for the CW app using sora-2. There are issues though. The first one is that while the sora app has a storyboard feature, (at least the one I can access this week), the API does  not. It does however allow you to pass in reference images to bridge scenes. That's pretty cool, and seems to work. I'm working on  a Python script to wait for bridging images between clips. That's worked out ok.  The real issue, so far, has been sora-2 moderation. Profanity and Real-Person Filters You cannot pass the image of a real person, (even one sora-2 invented), between clips. Moderation stops it every time. ( Moderation is what sora-2 calls its engine that decides if it's able to make your video at all.) This is what set off a cascade of moderatio...