Copasetic Flow

 One of the first things I realized about my RockMite, (the tranciever at the heart of Project TouCans, our low power, Morse code only, ham radio), is that the sidetone output is, shall we say, LOUD! This works for me since my hearing isn't great and I'm frequently operating from urban environments where there's lots of ambient QRM in the air around me: horns, crowds, sirens, and so on. I'm often reminded of that the sidetone is loud by other posts I find00 about working on old RockMites. The author usually starts by mentioning that theyauthor turned down the sidetone volume by changing the circuit. The post that comes to the top of my mind is  Taming the Wild Rockmite  by G. Forrest Cook. It has a great section on boosting the output power Rockmite's that I've put to good use. In any event, while workking on training an AI to decode Morse code, I started looking at spectograms of the Project TouCans audio output. Here's what I saw  Those vertical bands tha...

 Yesterday I posted about ChatGPT5 writing a TensorFlow CW decoder. It's actually decoding clean CW from its training data, but when I feed it audio recorded from an actual HF receiver, nope. I asked ChatGPT to write me a script to inspect the recorded audio and found out why this morning. The first thing I should point out is that this particular model is learning Morse code the wrong way. It is defineitly comparing dots and dashes. It's based on a vision neural net and so... The second thing I should point out is that it's learning Morse code faster than I did, so, you know, that's pretty impressive. OK. Here's why the AI isn't understanding RF-borne CW yet. Here's a spectrogram that corresponds to its self created training data. This particular one is from the video I posted about yesterday. The video is included again below so you can listen to the code as well. This is fairly impressive in that you can in fact actually read out the dits and dahs. Now, ...

 This week's AI project is to create an AI Morse code decoder. I've been working with the new ChatGPT 5 model since late last week. I've asked a few different models if they could understand Morse code. ChatGPT 5 couldn't. Gemini couldn't. That's when it occurred to me that this was probably the perfect time to learn how to use TensorFlow to make an AI. So, I changed my question. I asked ChatGPT 5, "If I wanted to setup a model that learned Morse code using Google's Tensor engines, could you describe the entire process and output the code for me?" To which it promptly, (what an awesome pun!), replied, "Heck yes—that’s a super fun project. Here’s a complete, practical path to a TPU-accelerated Morse code recognizer using TensorFlow + CTC (Connectionist Temporal Classification). It generates synthetic Morse audio (with realistic timing/noise/tempo wobble), trains a small CRNN on log-mel spectrograms, and decodes with greedy CTC. You can run it ...

 Everything old is new again. OK, I just said that to sound fancy. Actually though, the Project TouCans CW histogram , (you know for measuring the consistency of your dits and dahs while sending Morse Code), uses WebUSB and Web Audio , (respectively), to implement a connection to the serial port, where it listens to a Halikey, and to generate a sidetone. That's the old part.  Here's the new part, (to me anyway). It turns out both of those web capabilities are either documented by or a result of something called Project Fugu . I stumbled across the Google Develper site while browsing, (pun totally intended), through the extensions in my Chrome browser. It turns out Chrome Apps are going away, (finally a Google technology I didn't use is disappearing), and should be replaced by, (in Google's estimation), Web Apps, (which are referenced as Progressive Web Apps by Google Gemini.)  The capabilities available are pretty cool and include Web Bluetooth and a File System...

 I've been casting about trying to find the format for Project TouCans video QSLs I liked the best, and I've finally got it! Today, in the Mt. Moriah BLM National Conservation Area, (US-9692), I learned how to do split screen while also recording the screen, and I'm kind of in love with the way these look! In one panel, you can see the controls for Project TouCans. Over the audio, you can hear the QSO and my commentary as I work. In the other panel, you can see the view out the front of back of the phone which is kinda gorgeous on Mt. Moriah! It's just like Project TouCans. It mixes really old tech—the rig—with brand new tech—split screen phones, html/JavaScript control panels, embedded controllers; the last two things at least partially built by an LLM at this point—and looks kinda awesome... to me, anyway! Here's the first QSL. It doesn't have the polish of the ones I make at home—the gang and I are camping near Great Basin National Park—but I love the format...

 The Soldersmoke blog pointed out an interesting post that was a focal point of a larger book review for "Agent Sonya: The Spy Next Door". The post's author was quite convinced that the key protagonist of the nonfiction tome could not and did not construct her own QRP communication rig in the 1930s as stated by the book's author. I beleive Agent Sonya could have constructed the rig  More about the book on the publisher's site The Soldersmoke post The focal review post The 1936 Radio Handbook So, as I was saying: I, for one, believe. I'll admit up front, I didn't have time to read the entire linked post. The following assumes that the issue was Sonya being able to build a transmitter in 1939 for use from Switzerland to Moscow. The short version? It should have been the picture of simplicity.  As an aside and a bit of a bona fides, we routinely QSO from San Francisco to Texas and beyond. That's the same distance as Switzerland to Moscow. I grew up in a ...

 TouCans is back up and running! The battery noise is also just gone! One issue caused both the noise and the key stoppage. The ground wire connection from the keyer relay was in the process of breaking away during the fixes last week. This led to the noise I heard in the rig. It also led to the wire, of course, actually detaching which kept the keyer from working. KO6BTY soldered the ground connection back this morning, and TouCans is back up and running well! Here's what the noise before the fix. This is what a wire breaking in TouCans does. The new battery is doing a good job. Here's how the RBN saw TouCans right after the fix.

 Did you know there's a Morse keying world championship? Neither did I, but Martin, a ham radio op from the UK does. He's compiled a list of episodes from the BBC Sounds podcast that leans into the radio-esque, but contains other interesting topics including a family who, well.. here's a quote from Martin's blog: In 1966, Roy Bates occupied a disused military platform in the North Sea, and moved his family aboard.The next year he declared it to be the sovereign Principality of Sealand. Martin also did a cool thing and started a list of internet links referred to in the GQRP Sprat journal . It looks like it would be a lot of work, but it's a welcome relief from typing in addresses from the printed pages of the journal. I love that the journal is printed by the way, don't get me wrong.

Use any key but 'space' or 'esc' as a CW Key The app provides keyer sidetone on key down. As you key, it maintains two histograms: the one on top, (blue bars), measures the the lengths of your dits and dahs; the one on bottom, (green bars), measures the length of your pauses between dits and dahs, your pauses between letters, and your pauses between words. You can try to use the space key, but on my browser, it makes the scroll bar roll down the page. Halikey instructions are included below. Demo Video Halikey instructions To use the app with a Halikey, simply plug your halikey into your comupter, then your key into the other side of the Halikey. Then click 'Start Halikey'. You'll be presented with a dialog like the following For my computer, the Halikey turns up as 'USB Serial Port (COM3)' When I'm uncertain, I just unplug the Halikey refresh the page, note which port is missing in the new list, hook the Halikey back up to th...

 Ohhh, oh this one was kind of painful. I've spent... a lot of time trying to master the /R function of the picokeyer, (think the amount of time it takes for a video game level the first time.) In the end,all the issues were  mine, but wow. So, the /R command when recording message on the picokeyer repeats the last word of Morse code. At first, I thought I couldn't get the command to work becuase I wasn't used to banging out a Morse code 'slash' character, and that was certainly part of it. The bigger part though, for me, was learning to evenly space my letters. Without doing this, I got results that just seemed weird for the longest time. I'd get things like  KD0FNR R R or  KD0FNR NR NR and I shoudl have thought things through. I've mentioned before that NR sounds like / , but the instructions for the keyer specifially mentioned that to get a slash character out I'd need to enter two slash characters in a row. So, when I heard what sounded like the slas...

 Listening to a recording of myself sending Morse code over the weekend, it finally occurred to me why KD0FNR is frquently aliased as KD0F by the Reverse Beacon Network: NR sounds a lot like the character '/'. The LCWO code practice site made it easy to tell you  and  show you: First, listen to the entire KD0FNR callsign: Now, listen to just NR: And now, here's the character '/': Hear the similarity? The RBN ignores characters after '/'. Thus, the 'slash' (that's really NR) is ignored, and the callsign KD0FNR truncates to KD0F. Ham Radio and Unschooling The middle kid, 10 year-old Mota, is mildly interested in ham radio and he's learning Morse code. He is however, very interseted in programming. Consequently, he's been working though an html5 game programming book. In the book, he's having to learn both html and JavaScript. Consequently, he knows what a div is, and he knows where his JavaScript code gets pulle...

 This is kinda interesting, and gives me a bit more faith as well as a bit more data in and about the Rockmite. (Funny how those two things—faith and data—often go hand in hand.) The Reverse Beacon Network, (RBN), uses software to decode Morse code. The software is quite good, but today I found out it's not perfect. While working on my own python script for reading the telnet data stream that feeds the RBN site directly, I typed in a search string for my callsign—KD0FNR—as KD0*. Then, I tried doing the same thing on the RBN web site. The results I got back were unexpected, but answered a lot of questions. RBN map showing KD0F* QSOs Callsigns that were variants of mine like KD0F, KD0FN and KD0FX were returrned. A lot of them appear to actually be my callsign misinterpreted by the software Morse code decoder, and tell a story of the radio's operations that fill in the gaps I've been wondering about up until now. KD0FN is almost certainly me since a review of the FCC database...

 Chirping Morse code! Yes, chirping! I was treated to a few minutes of bird song on the first ham radio morning of the year listening in on the Utah SDR . The chirping was courtesy of WA5BDU out of Arkansas. When I asked what the chirping was about he explained he was using a 1960s VFO (variable frequency oscillator) and that while he'd made every effort to make it stable that in that sort of VFO keying the transmitter caused the frequency of the VFO to shift just a bit causing the chirp. I'm looking forward to building a slug tuned VFO for the Rockmite, (actually a second altered Rockmite). Hopefully we'll hear the same. More on the VFO here .

 Since the 20 m Rockmite has video game switches on the keyer, it only makes since that it should have its own twitch stream! I'm still learning twitch. The 10 year old here, Mota, has more experience, so he's helping me, and we're getting there. Starting yesterday, we got aspects of the Rockmite and it's little video game keyer up on twitch !  So far, we've mostly been doing propagation tracking using an SDR defined radio in Utah. Hopefully, we'll have station videos and the like soon. (It would help if I could figure out how to turn on the microphone. I know, the irony of a CW operator not being able to get the mic to work. Go figure.) Also! A question: I think we're the first CW (Morse code) amateur radio station on twitch. Are we? Have you seen any others?

 Sharing everything I do with the 11, 10, and 7 year-old gang works best for me in unschooling. Of course, YMMV.  Allow me to elucidate. This morning, I decided that Forrest Cook was exactly right . The diode that was protecting the Rockmite from dying if I ever hooked up the batteries backward was also succking up 0.8 Volts that could be used to transmit a bit further. I decided to take the thing out. But first, I called the gang in to talk about it. They've worked with LEDs before; they know that if you hook them up backwards they don't conduct, and therefore don't light up.I explained that this was exactly the same, except the here diode doesn't light up ever. It does however flat out refuse to conduct if the battery is hooked up backwards, (the same thing as the LED being instralled backwards.) I then explained that not conducting when the batterey was backwards kept other bits of the circuit from dying when hooked up to a backwards battery. Finally, I talked about ...

Prototype Rockmite including the Open Headset Interconnect Standard is complete! I brought the headset and keyer programming controls through the RJ45 connector yesterday. System with all controls and outputs routed through RJ45 : Yes, as you can see above, both of our workspaces are in despearate need of scalpels or at least Xaxto knives. I'm left stripping wires with the hiking, camping, and fishing Buck knife. The boards are now mounted to their respective enclosures. Here's a picture of the entire system: The 'headset' (let's call it the accessory) breakout board is mounted on nylon spacers superglued to the battery case. The radio side board is mounted with metal screws and nuts to the radio case. At the moment, the keyer programming button is implemented as a 'scorpion tail' switchc. (Did I just coin a phrase?) A wire from the pin 2 screw terminal is arched over the pin 3 (common ground) screw, and depressed when needed. Since this switch is only used...

 First, the promised picture of the new keyer: I was operating the Rockmite on 20 meters QRP from McLaren Park this morning with the antenna tied between two trees. I started about quarter to 7, attracted the interest of one hiker who I chatted with briefly, and then got to listening. TLDR; the radio still hasn't made a contact. I did however hear some interesting stations: All of these maps are from the Reverse Beacon Network .

 In unschooling, we run across a lot of literature and opinions about how to teach someone to read. Did you know, (I didn't), in 1897, there were studies about how to learn Morse code? I did not: https://grants.hhp.uh.edu/clayne/HistoryofMC/Bryan&Harter-1897.pdf The gang and I are starting in learning Morse this week (again). Watch here for more updates on how it's going. Our Morse practice site of the moment: https://www.aa9pw.com/morsecode/test/ Picture of a https://copaseticflow.blogspot.com/2008/11/casing-up-rockmite.html:

The 9, 7, and 5 year-old gang and I are going to build RockMite radios as one of our stuck in the house pandemic things. One of the hitches though is that RockMites only transmit and receive on the Morse code portions of the ham radio bands.  We found a nice set of Morse code sounds on the ARRL page , but clicking each letter opens an mp3 player. It's not exactly as easy to use as we'd hoped. A little html later though, we've made own practice page that anyone can use.  Each letter, number, and symbol is displayed in a table. Click on the one you're interested in to hear the sound for that character, number or symbol.  Any suggestions for what we should try next? I'm thinking something using the code practice sessions the ARRL has linked on the same site. What do you think? Scroll down for the practice table. Have fun! Also, if you'd like to contribute, here's our work on github . A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T ...