Ultimate ICR

Experimental tool

This is a new tool and is not finished. It is meant to replace the ICR Trainer, Adaptive ICR and Adaptive ICR v2.

Hear a Morse character and answer it as fast as you can: type it, tap it, say it, or simply know it. The aim is Instant Character Recognition (ICR): knowing each character the moment it ends.

Choose how you answer, what you learn and how you progress, and press Play. Characters you find hard come up more often, and when you know your set the next character can be added.

 
 
 

What to learn

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:

How you answer

How you answer each character, and how it’s marked.

 
 
 
 

How to practise
Configure: | | |

Define the practice steps by toggling the buttons below, and setting the delays.

Each character

1: Choice - which character

The next character is chosen at Random from your set. Favour sets how much more often the ones you get wrong or answer slowly come up: Evenly, A little, More or Mostly; it is not there when your answers are not marked. With Intro on, a character just added is shown, said and played first.

2: Morse - the character is played

The character is played in Morse. Set the speed and pitch in the .

3: Answer - as fast as you can

The time you have to answer in. A bare number is read as milliseconds. Add a unit to follow the Morse speed, e.g. “5dit”, “3fdit”, “1ws”.
The longest the run waits for your answer; no answer in this time counts as a miss. A bare number is read as milliseconds. Add a unit to follow the Morse speed, e.g. “5dit”, “3fdit”, “1ws”.

Answer as you chose under How you answer. Thinking, or speaking with nobody marking, you have the time in the box (e.g. “1000”, “5dit”, “3fdit”, “1ws”). A typed, tapped or spoken answer ends this step, and the box is the longest the run waits for it.

4: Check - the verdict

The time you have to indicate you were wrong; after it, the answer counts as right. A bare number is read as milliseconds. Add a unit to follow the Morse speed, e.g. “5dit”, “3fdit”, “1ws”.

Typed, tapped or recognised, your answer is Marked by the tool. Otherwise the answer is revealed: Show, Speech and Morse. Marking yourself, you then have the time in the box to indicate you were wrong; doing nothing counts as right.

On a hit

H1: Bell - you were right

Bell rings when you are right. Choose it in the .

On a miss

M1: Feedback - what it was

After a miss: Show the character, ring the Bell, and Speech says it. If the tool marked a right answer wrong, press Backspace or I was right.

M2: Recap - hear it again

Recap says the character and plays it again, so you hear what it should have sounded like.

Main path (continued)

5: Wait - before the next character

Pause before the next character. A bare number is read as milliseconds. Add a unit to follow the Morse speed, e.g. “5dit”, “3fdit”, “1ws”.

Either Hold until you press Play, or pause for the time in the box (e.g. “1000”, “5dit”, “3fdit”, “1ws”).

Automatic progression

You know your set when:

  • the newest character is right times out of its last , answered in under ms, and
  • every other character is right at least times out of its last , answered in under ms.
%.

Practise
characters

 

    Review

    Every character, with what you answered beside it and how long you took.

    History

    Your practice history, grouped by day. Select a row to show its timing chart; use Play to hear a message.
    Time Message Speed You copied Recording Your sending Speed Result Accuracy Precision Repeats Delay (ms)
    No practice recorded yet.

    Export history

    How much?
    As what?

    Clear History

    This clears the practice history for this tool only. Other tools keep their history.

    Clear just today’s practice, or everything recorded for this tool?

    Statistics

    Each character’s Accuracy (how often you were right, as a percentage) and Time (the median time of your right answers, in milliseconds), and n, how many times it was marked. An arrow shows the change since your previous session or day. Pick a character to see how it has changed over time.

      Practise a few characters and each will be summarised here.

      The spread of your right answers’ times for each character, fastest first: the box is the middle half, the line in it the median. The dashed lines are 600 ms (instant recognition) and 2000 ms. A low median with occasional long stalls is not yet instant.

      Answer a few characters with timing on (speak, type or tap) and their times will be shown here.

      The characters you answered as another, most often first. Only answers the tool marked count: typed, tapped or recognised, and not overruled.

        No confusions yet.

        One point per practice session: how often you were right, the time of your right answers (median and middle half), and the character speed. They are shown together on purpose: raising the speed slows your answers for a while even as you improve.

        Practise on more than one occasion and your progress will be charted here.

        Settings

         Help

        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, insert into a document, or share with someone else. The Reset Settings button changes everything in this page to its default value.

        Reset Settings

        Are you sure you want to reset all settings in this page to their default values?

        Upload Settings

        Uploading new settings will overwrite your existing ones. Are you sure you want to continue?

        New Settings Applied

        Your uploaded settings have been applied to the page.

        Notes

        Each way of answering and each course has a link of its own, such as /labs/ultimate-icr/?preset=phone,licw. They never set your speed.

        Speech recognition sends your spoken answer to a cloud service. Indicating you were wrong by voice only listens for speech, on your own device.

        Much of the learning method comes from Better-ICR, by John AJ1DM, by way of the Adaptive ICR Trainer.

        There are . Press ? to list them.

        Change log

          Keyboard Shortcuts

          Always:

          • Play / Pause: Space
          • Stop: Esc
          • I was right (after the tool wrongly marks a miss): Backspace

          Answering from the keyboard:

          • Answering by Type: the character’s key, + for <AR> and = for <BT>
          • Marking yourself by key: X if you missed it

          Except during a run that takes answers from the keyboard:

          • Play / Pause: /
          • This list: ?
          • Character speed down / up: Shift+Z / Shift+X; Farnsworth speed: Z / X

          A run takes answers from the keyboard when you answer by Type, or mark yourself by pressing X. During one, every letter, figure and symbol key is an answer, or does nothing between answers; only Space, Esc and Backspace keep their shortcuts.

          Morse Controls

          Playback Medium

          Timing

           

          No character speed fits the other settings

           

          No Farnsworth speed fits the other settings

           

          No Wordsworth speed fits the other settings

          Sound

           
           
           

          Speech Controls

          This browser cannot speak

          It has no speech synthesis, which is usual for a browser built into an app such as Facebook. Open this page in your usual browser to use speech.

          No text-to-speech voices found

          Check your browser and system speech synthesis settings.

          You are offline: only local voices are available.

           

          Bell Controls

          Played when your answer is correct.

           

          Played when your answer is wrong.

           

          Flashcard Controls

          Aa

          Speech Error

          Speech isn't working

          Some devices — especially Safari on iOS — need a direct tap before they will speak. Tap this to start speech:

          Tip: speech is much more reliable if you tap any button on the page before you press Play.

          If you are offline, open the controls and choose a voice labelled "local".

          You can also turn speech off in the settings to continue without it. Avoid letting the browser go to the background or locking the device while it is speaking.

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            Change Log

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