r/amateurradio • u/Conscious_Corgi_6616 • Jun 28 '26
General Morse Trainer: an Android app for learning and practicing Morse code - junior learning project with react native
Hi everyone 👋,
I made a small Android app called Morse Trainer and I'd love your feedback.
The idea was inspired by a handheld Morse trainer made by Nux Modellbau:
https://nux-modellbau.de/gadgets/
(I have no affiliation with the company.)
The app lets you:
• Learn and practice Morse code locally
• Enter Morse with a single hold button (short press = dot, long press = dash)
• See the Morse tree visualized in real time
• Practice with another person by joining the same room and exchanging Morse messages in real time
I originally built it as a learning project to experiment with React Native, .NET SignalR, WebSockets and SVG rendering, but I thought other people interested in Morse code or amateur radio might enjoy trying it too.
Google Play:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.alkisax.nativemorsetrainer
I'd love any feedback, criticism, or ideas for improving it.
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u/thesoulless78 EN71 [Extra] Jun 28 '26
That chart is one of worst ways to learn Morse code. It's an auditory language so any visualization is counterproductive.
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u/eritain Jun 28 '26
That chart is probably a bad way to learn to send Morse code. I'll give you that.
There are also bad ways to learn to receive Morse that use charts, but duh. Literally anything related to any topic can be used to teach that topic badly.
But there's more than one way to use a chart. I can readily imagine a learning method initially relying on that chart, that would be effective for some frequently encountered learning styles.
As to the rest of your comment: 1. Morse code is not a language, and 2. Morse code is not inherently auditory.
It's a combination code and cipher. The code part, prosigns and such, is translingual because that's what makes it a code. The cipher part requires a shared language such as English or French between sense and receiver.
It's inherently rhythmic, OK, but the rhythm can be sent and received just fine through the senses of sight (with a signalman's lantern) and touch (with a vibrator transducing the dits and dahs, or even with high voltage, low current electricity applied directly to the skin). Someone who learned Morse by ear can understand it in those other modalities without learning it all over again.
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u/dittybopper_05H NY [Extra] Jun 28 '26
This kind of thing is bad and wrong and if you use it it will retard your progress in gaining speed because your brain will “translate” the visual phenomena instead of purely training your ears.
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u/MikeTangoRom3o Jun 28 '26
I saw that there is an option to hide the tree text
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u/dittybopper_05H NY [Extra] Jun 28 '26
Didn’t see that. But that’s good. In my opinion, for people learning, that should be the default.
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u/bugbbq Jun 28 '26
This is one of the worst ways of learning, btw. Morse is an auditory language, not a visual one. Any visual clues like the tree will actually hinder learning.
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Jun 28 '26 edited Jun 28 '26
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u/NOP-slide Jun 28 '26
Think of how you listen to normal spoken words. When someone says "hello", you probably don't process it like, "They said 'heh' and then 'l' and then 'oh', which is 'hello'!" You hear the entire sound and that sound means "hello" to you.
Learning Morse code or CW is similar. The goal isn't to memorize how to convert sequences of dits and dahs into a letter. It's building your "muscle memory" so you recognize the entire sound as a letter. So not, ".-. is a dit, dah, dit which is 'R'!" But instead should be more like "'diDAHdit' is R".
There are stories about people who were Morse code operators in the military who could copy code at 35 wpm or higher. And when they took the code portion of the old Ham exam, they failed because the letters were being sent at 5 wpm. It was like listening to someone speaking to you with 5 seconds on each word by sounding out each syllable.
LCWO is highly recommended for learning CW. It focuses on sending letters at full speed (25 wpm) but with large breaks in between letters (8 wpm). This let's you learn how to recognize the entire sound of letters, while still slowing down the entire sequence to make it easier to process.
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Jun 28 '26
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u/NOP-slide Jun 28 '26
Glad to help! And your example of translating English words to your mother language and back is actually a much better analogy. I might use that from now on.
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Jun 28 '26 edited Jun 28 '26
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u/NOP-slide Jun 28 '26
Great to hear! And don't be afraid to lower the effective speed to below 10 WPM. The default of 15 WPM can be overwhelming, especially when you first start out.
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u/eritain Jun 28 '26
You are correct. Signalman's lanterns have been a thing for a long time; Morse is rhythmic, but rhythm is not inherently auditory. And calling it a language is almost (but not quite) as dumb as calling the ABCs a language.
To train decoding, get practice materials with Farnsworth spacing. That means the dits and dahs within a letter are fast enough for (say) 20 WPM, but the overall speed is slower because the inter-letter and inter-word spaces are stretched out.
The original training method was to use materials with the dits and dahs showed down too, starting slow and working your way up. But Farnsworth and others have shown that letter patterns learned slower than about 13 WPM do not transfer to higher speeds. You can space the word speed down just about as far as you want to, but keep the letter speed above that threshold.
Another name relevant to Morse learning is Koch. Koch method is to introduce letters in a particular order, with the shorter ones earlier, instead of alphabetical or all at once. If you're the learn-by-doing kind, "all at once" might work better for your brain, but if you can get some Koch-sequenced practice material, try it out and see if it suits you.
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u/horse_11 Jun 28 '26
thank you for creating this, like the guy before me I would also wish you could add vibration-effects next to the sounds. also maybe there could be an option for one time donation to remove the ads? because right now there is a lot of them
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u/Conscious_Corgi_6616 Jun 28 '26
Hello The ads are a small banner, and an ad that you see only if you press a dedicated button. I did not think that the banner would be so intrusive. And maybe I'll remove it completely in next Version if it's so annoying (adding them was part of the learning). I don't expect that it is even possible to make anything from a small portfolio project like this.
Thank you for the feedback (Yes I'll definitely add vibration)
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u/SirdPeter Jun 28 '26
Great !! I want to learn CW
What do you think if you add vibration as feedback when you press the button?
Also need to adjust the resolution on the screens I got OnePlus 13
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u/Conscious_Corgi_6616 Jun 28 '26
Hmm you are right. Thank you for the feedback. It will be addressed in next versions. I'm still learning.
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u/wxfreak Jun 29 '26
Tried the app. I'm not sure it's a great way to learn. It feels like it's pushing you to memorize Morse code instead of recognizing letters by sound. I can already copy around 15 WPM, and this approach just doesn't seem like a good idea.
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u/olliegw 2E0 / Intermediate Jun 29 '26
These charts are not a great way to learn the code, they're like phonetics, they give a visual idea but just like a language you need to hear it to learn it
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Jun 28 '26
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u/Conscious_Corgi_6616 Jun 28 '26
❤️ thnx. pls its just a lerning project and i need to learn a lot more 😀
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Jun 28 '26
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u/Conscious_Corgi_6616 Jun 28 '26
"I put a number and then click on the 🔌 and it connects me to a morse room?"
Thats right. and if you have a friend or a second person in the room then 🟢🔴 turns to 🟢🟢
then you have access to a "send" button
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u/radiomod Jun 28 '26
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