Alexa can help you learn Morse Code

I’ve written before about how I’d like to develop an Alexa skill to control my IC-7300. I haven’t gotten around to that yet, but, Joe, N3HEE, has developed an Alexa skill called Continuous Wave. It’s designed to help you learn Morse Code. To use this skill, you have to first enable it. Once enabled, say,

“Alexa, open Continuous Wave” (Opens the skill at the main menu)

You can then say any of the following at any voice prompt…

Learn
Practice
Alphabet
Common words
Random words
Words
Sentences
Call signs
Contest
Quick Brown Fox
QSO
Help
Stop – To end your session.

I’ve just played around with it for a bit, and found it to be quite entertaining. One big drawback is that you can’t set the speed. It’s currently limited to sending at 20 words per minute only.

Also, the learn function could use a little refining. When you give the command “learn,” it asks you for a character, sends that character three times, and then asks you for another. If you could set the speed at which the skill sends characters, it could teach a character like the K7QO Code Course, first sending the character slowly, then ramping up the speed.

Overall, though, I think this is a great first shot at a usable Alexa skill for teaching Morse Code. I hope this is the first of many versions of this skill.

Other ham radio skills

While I was poking around on Amazon, I decided to see what other amateur radio skills might be available. Here are some that I found:

• Ham Exam. Ask Alexa to ask you questions from the Technician Class question pool.
• Ham Lookup. Allows you to look up amateurs by call sign. Information is provided from the callbook.info database.
• Ham Radio Propagation Forecast. Reports the latest forecasts directly from HamQSL (run by N0NBH).
• ARRL Audio News. Adds ARRL Audio News to your Alexa flash briefing.

Have you found any other Alexa skills useful for amateur radio work? If so, please tell us about them.