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The Sound of Ages Long Lost
The sound of morse-code is something wonderful, all those dits dahs at lightning speed and somehow people can make sense of it. It helped in wars, and for the longest time was the only real method of long distance communication with any kind of speed. Even today this old medium is still being used in emergencies. That's why I've decided to pay tribute to the mighty morse-code.
The Idea AKA The Concept
One day I cleaned my room (rare occasion) and found some old Lucky Luke (wild west) comics, which reinvigorated my interest in morse-code. I then decided I wanted to bring this once new medium into the 21st century. To contrast the use of morse-code with our current modern society I've decided to recreate a chatroom/messenger style environment. Two computers will both be running custom software (Made in Processing, see GitHub, linked on the bottom of the page). Attached via USB to both computers will be a telegraph key (something like pictured below) that communicates with the computer over the Serial bus. Any communication between both the laptops will have to occur over the wired connection between the two keys.
Besides the original morse-code applications I have also been inspired by the Steampunk/Cyberpunk aesthetic, heavily borrowing elements from that visual style, especially in the chatroom Processing sketch. This part of the design signifies the fantastical and imaginary side of the project also alluding to the slight ridiculousness of the whole concept, which is largely impractical and slightly over the top (as all things Steampunk should be).
The Description AKA The Process
In broad steps we can divide the creation process in three parts:
Creation of the Arduino Prototype: Using an Arduino Uno, two momentary buttons and a piezo buzzer. Translates the time the button was pressed into dits, dahs and a added special character. This special character is used for control messages (such as space, and send message) and was originally intended to also send emoticons. The momentary buttons of the prototype were to be replaced by the actual telegraph keys I would make in step 2.
Creation of the Hardware Key: This process has been detailed extensively since it is one of the most time intensive parts of this build. I've taken a picture of just about every step of the creation process of the hardware part, which, along with comments can be viewed in the appropriate Google Docs Page. I learned a lot about woodworking.
Creation of the Processing Chatroom: Through the use of Processing I created a sketch that translated the dits, dahs and special characters from the Serial monitor into readable messages. Then I created a steampunk-styled user interface for the whole experience that has clear influences from Facebook Messenger.
All of the code, both for the Arduino, on which the telegraph key runs and for the Processing sketch that runs on the computer can be found on the dedicated GitHub repository (also linked at the bottom of this page).
Future Planning
If I were to be given infinite time and resources to further develop this concept I would add some of the following features:
Emoticons: Most importantly, to really lift morse-code into the 21st century, I would add a way to key-in emoji, probably using the earlier discussed special character.
Multi-user Connections: Allowing more than just the bare minimum (2) of people to connect to get a more 'social' environment.
Stronger Hardware Construction: The current hardware has some major cutting of corners (such as the use of clothes pegs as hinges and springs) due to time constraints. Also there is no way of actually setting any of the physical properties, such as spring-strength, key-depth etc.
Make the telegraph key a USB-HID keyboard: Only on the morning of the presentation did I realize my New Media Icon (mixtela) actually made a USB HID version of a telegraph key. I would love to incorporate this functionality into my current design.
Important Links and Resources
Some of the most important external links for this project are:
My GitHub: All the code (Arduino & Processing) as well as the art assets are hosted on here, everything that is mine is licensed under MIT.
YouTube Video: Video of the final version of the project working. Shows two laptops and two telegraph keys communicating via morse-code.
Google Docs: Shows the steps of the woodworking hardware part through pictures and small comments. Useful for those that want to build along.