As I’ve written in the past, my friend Paul, KW1L, is a real CW technician. So, when I saw the article, “CW-ELMER Advanced Morse Code Learning System” in the January 2021 QST, I knew he’d be interested in it. And, since all it takes to build it is an Arduino, a speaker and a 16×2 LCD display, I already had all the parts.
Or, so I thought. As it turns out, the display specified in the article uses a serial interface and my 16×2 display has an I2C interface. A quick email to the author, David K7DUN, not only yielded some advice, but an updated version of the software. I connected up all the components as shown in the figure below, and the thing began to play.
This little device has a couple of interesting features that I’ve not seen before. Its ANALYZE function, for example, measures the lengths of the dits and dahs that you send and then calculates the average length and compares that to a target value. It also gives you the max and min lengths of the dits and dahs of the text you sent.
If your sending is way off, you can go to the EXERCISES section and practice just dits and dahs. As you send these elements, the LCD displays the length of the dit or dah that you just sent and the target value. There are also exercises for intra-character pause, character pause, and word pause.
I haven’t tried connecting a keyer to the thing yet, but it could be useful when used with a keyer, too. Using this, you should be able to determine how consistent the dits and dahs that your keyer sends really are and get an indication of how consistent your character pauses and word pauses are. (Paul often chides me that I sometimes crowd my characters.)
All in all, this is a fun little project for those who want to really perfect their sending. If you do decided to build one, be sure to email K7DUN and get the latest version of the software. I’ll publish a little more about how this thing works after Paul has played with it for a while.
Don says
I’ll have to give this a shot. Learning CW has been rough for me.
Dan KB6NU says
If you do give it a shot, let me know what you think of it.
david Duncan, K7DUN says
Thanks for the great review. Response to the article has been impressive, to say the least, and I am continuing to work on improvements even now. Version 4.0 (beta) is due to be released as soon as I get the documentation together to support it, and contains a cleaner organization of the menus and a USB Reader, which translates text received over the serial port (usually via the USB port) into Morse for practicing receiving skills using words as well as random characters. It will run on Arduino Micro, like the original, or UNO, NANO, NANO-EVERY, and MEGA, but has some problems with LEONARDO. It can also be easily configured to drive a Parallax serial LCD, generic 44780 LCD, 1602 I2C/TWI LCD, or DFROBOT I2C LCD. At this time CW-Elmer is not available as a kit or finished product, but I can provide the latest sketch (source code) for anyone who wants to build their own.
Hermann Kulmus says
Hi David, is it posslble to get the ARDUINO-Code? Please send it to my e-mail. Thanks for “HELP”
vy 73 to You ana your Family from GERMANY
Hermann DJ8UZ
Jeff Swan (N0SWN) says
I would greatly appreciate the latest sketch as I bought one from MFJ and would like to modify it a bit so that the display sends a character or word and you have to key it in correctly. Thanks!!!
Tim says
[email protected]
I would like to acquire the sketch.
I have a spare MEGA.
Manuel says
David, Manny here, WP4PBQ , from Puerto Rico. I’m interested in building this item. Appreciate if you could send information to [email protected]. Thank You, Manny
Dan KB6NU says
Are you an ARRL member? This article is in the January 2021 QST……73, Dan
David Duncan K7DUN says
I am a member of ARRL, and I wrote the article submitted to QST about a year ago. It takes them time to evaluate, edit and reformat my manuscript to what appeared in print. 73
David Duncan K7DUN says
Hello all. It’s been a while in development, but the CW-ELMER is now being produced by MFJ Enterprises as the MFJ419-CW ELMER, and will soon be available from many ham radio dealers including Ham Radio Outlet and DX Engineering, and many others. It runs the very latest software version, and easily fits in your hand for portable operation. Look on the MFJ catalog for ordering details, and thank you for your continuing interest. 73 from K7DUN.
Dan KB6NU says
Very cool, David. I’m curious. Did they approach you about selling it or did you approach them?
Dr John Moyle says
Hi David
Just ordered MFJ 419 from DX Engineering (their P&P half the price of MFJ to the UK!)
My question is what sort of input from a keyer will it accept? It doesn’t seem to say in the MFJ manual .
73
John G1AWJ