Head Copy Machine v2

Experimental tool

This is an experimental tool and very much not finished. It has mostly been tested in Chrome and may not work in other browsers.

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Learn Morse code using just your ears and voice.

Much of this learning method has been copied from the Better-ICR tool with the kind permission of John AJ1DM.

Briefly, the tool lets you practise your single-character recognition skills. It will play a character in CW and then time how long it takes for you to speak the character that you heard. It will show or speak what the character was and you must then indicate whether you were correct or not. The idea is to drill on selected characters until you achieve "Instant Character Recognition" (or "ICR"), defined here as a response time of less than 600ms.

Please to find out how to use this tool.

Before using this tool you must permit access to your microphone:

Select which microphone to use:

Next, Configure the Microphone (unless the settings are already correct).

Practise Content

Choose which characters to practise and which order to learn them in:

Alphabetical, but not the best order for learning.

Select characters in the grid above by type:

Each CW Academy Beginner session introduces a few letters. Use the dark red buttons to select each session's letters.

Select characters in the grid above by type:

Extras not included in the CW Academy Beginner course:

The traditional Koch method ordering (as used in G4FON).

Select characters in the grid above by type:

Extras not included in the Koch ordering:

The order used by Learn CW Online.

Select characters in the grid above by type:

Extras not included in the LCWO ordering:

The order used by the LICW Club. Use the dark red buttons to select each “Beginners' Carousel” session.

Select characters in the grid above by type:

Extras not included in the LICW ordering:

×

Playback Controls

Microphone | Morse | Speech | Bell | Help

Playback style

Character Speed

Toggle the buttons to choose what sequence to play and show for each message:

1: Morse - play the message using sound, light, vibration

The character is played in Morse in this stage. Use the Morse Controls to configure the Morse (speed, volume, pitch and playback medium).

Auto will automatically add new Morse characters to the practice set (using the order chosen above) once you are competent with the current set.

2: Recognition - time for you to recognise the character and say it

The computer will listen for up to 5 seconds for your voice. The Mic button lights up to show when the microphone is active.

3: Reveal - the character just played is revealed

With the Speech button pressed, the Morse character just sent will be spoken (Speech Controls ). This is ideal for hands-free operation but is not the fastest method.

The Flashcard immediately shows the Morse character just sent.

4: Check - you indicate if you copied correctly

This stage waits for 2 seconds. If there is no input then a miss-copy is assumed.

With the Mic button pressed, if you say anything it is taken as a correct copy.

With the Keyboard button pressed you can press Y or O for a successful copy or N or P for a miss-copy.

5: Success? - a bell is played to indicate whether you copied correctly

One of two bells is rung depending on copy success.

The choice of bell cannot be configured yet.

6: Recap - a reminder of the character sound again

The character is recapped (said and played in CW) if you copied it incorrectly.

7: End - a bell is played to indicate the end of the sequence

A bell is played to indicate the end of the sequence, in order to prepare you for the next character.

Use Bell Controls to configure the Bell (type, volume and duration).

Play

Play starts playback.

Stop stops it!

Flashcard

Time

History Chart

Character Order:

The bottom chart shows whether you copied each character successfully on the last 5 occasions. The top chart shows the delay in milliseconds between the CW ending and you saying the character. The bar shows a weighted average and the line shows the last attempt.

Results

Load previous results (from this tool or Better-ICR) to continue practising from a previous point, or Save your results in a file. You can also Clear all your results data.

Save a report of your progress to share with your advisor. Complete your name or callsign for inclusion in the report.

Name or callsign

Settings

Load some settings from a file (overwriting your current choices), or Save all the settings for this page in a file. Share Settings generates a link to bookmark your settings or share with someone else. The Reset Settings button changes everything in this page to its default value.

Head Copy Machine Notes

This is an experiment and not finished. The known problems are:

The speech detection is slightly unreliable
The timing of the sequence is not configurable
The colours don't all adjust for the dark mode
The trigger for adding a new character needs to be configurable
There is lots of speech synthesis in English which needs to be internationalised

General Notes

General help on the playback controls and Morse Controls (Timing) can be found in a separate page.

This tool works in most browsers: please see the FAQ if you are having problems.

Change log