If anyone is running into problems with Ham Morse on an iPhone4S or iPad2 can you let me know so I can follow up with you and see if we can figure this out?

Many thanks!

Simon, AA9PW

To address this I have completely redone the settings page and used a more conventional table layout that iPhone/iPad users are very familiar with. This is still a work in progress but below are some screenshots of what I have so far.

Main Settings Page

Here’s the main settings page that you reach when you click the (i) button on the front page.

Its more organized than it was before – the character word per minute and font size sliders are near the top and now we have a new Volume control that many people have asked for – this allows you to set the volume of the code separately from the volume of the device itself – your ringer can still be loud but your morse code can be less noisy.

Content Settings

Below the sliders is the content settings section. This is where you can configure which characters are included in your practice set and which are not. Previously you had to set them in groups, now you have control at the individual character level. This is the same for Letters, Numbers, Prosigns and Punctuation.

Koch Configuration

I’ve added something slightly different for the Koch character progression. The Koch method takes the morse code characters and organizes them in a standard order that is optimized for learning and retention. You learn the first two characters (usually K and M) and then when you have mastered those, add the next character, and so on. This is an established method and works very well, however, if you want to use a different order now you can. In the screenshot below K is the first letter that you will see and I am moving the letter “M” from the second position down to the third position and “R” has moved up into the number two position.

To change the order in which the letters appear you click Reorder and the ‘move’ buttons appear on the right hand side of each letter. To move the letter to a different position touch and hold the button and then you can drag the letter to a different position in the order. You could rearrange the whole set of characters this way but if anyone has suggestions for alternative character orders that would be broadly useful please let me know. I can store these different orders in the app so you don’t have to do really large scale changes manually.

Help Pages

Now that I have space, I am also including help links and other documentation that should provide a better introduction to Morse Code, how to learn it and general background links of interest.

This is still in development along with some other features for the main part of the app like Continuous play – turn this on and the app will keep generating code, if you are listening to News feeds it will work its way through all the news channels in turn. This makes it far easier to have a long practice session where you dont have to keep restarting the player after each block of morse.

I’m hoping to put this out in April after testing, etc. If you would like to beta test this new version please let me know and that will help spur things along. The other benefit of all these changes and moving over to the table layout is that this will make conversion to an iPad app that much easier, stay tuned for more developments in that area.

Cheers – Simon.

If anyone would like to be a beta tester to take it for a spin and give me some feedback on how its working please .

I have been adding in support for Voice Over, the iPhone’s accessibility system. When turned on this provides audible descriptions of each button and what it does which should be helpful for folks with impaired vision.

Click to view Ham Morse v1.3 beta screenshot full size

For people using the Koch method to learn the code I have added in a separate Koch option so you can work your way through the 26 letters, 10 numbers, 4 punctuation symbols and 3 prosigns in the following order:

K M R S U A P T L O
W I . N J E F 0 Y ,
V G 5 / Q 9 Z H 3 8
B ? 4 2 7 C 1 D 6 X
<BT> <SK> <AR>

Click the [+] button to add the next letter in the series to your practice set, click the [-] button to remove letters. The progression of letters is fixed in this order currently, I would like to make this configurable in a later version.

The speed at which the characters are sent can now be modified independently on the settings page. Previously the characters were always sent at 15wpm if you had an overall speed of 15wpm or less selected. The spaces between letters and words were increased to slow down the overall speed at which the morse code was sent. This is the Farnsworth method (see Learning Morse Code on Wikipedia). If you want to have the characters sent at a different speed (slower or faster) this can now be changed on the Settings page, if you increase the overall speed to be greater than the Character Speed that you have set then the character speed setting gets overridden and all the code is sent using the timings of the Overall Speed.

The RSS feed option has been renamed News so it makes more sense. This option gets news headlines using the RSS News feeds provided by Newspapers, TV channels, etc. and gives you a way to copy real text and stay up to date with the events of the day.

There is more in the works but this is what should make it into the next release. Any feedback more than welcome and thank you for your continued support!

Simon, AA9PW

All in all, the best code software for the iPhone”

Great application to get ready for the main event [Field Day]“

Overall a great program to practice morse code on the go

Thank you to everyone who has purchased the app and put a review on the iTunes site. A few things have cropped up in terms of features, functionality, etc. and I thought I’d comment on some of these here.

• 25wpm speed limitation – I have increased this to 50wpm and hope to send this update to the app store this week
• User Interface – Tapping the knobs to turn them, rather than touch & drag to turn. I agree this is not as intuitive as one would like, I have every intention of changing this so you can touch a knob and drag it either way to turn it clockwise or anticlockwise. For the first iteration it was simpler to use a button to make the knobs turn but this isnt what I want for the long term, particularly now that the speed goes up to 50.
• Ability to practice sending morse – Currently the app is just for practicing receiving code rather than giving you the ability to practice sending code by tapping on the screen. I do have a bunch of ideas along these lines but I needed to get the receive part done first.
• Info/settings button – The (i) button is hard to hit at times and this is a known bug. I’m using a standard Apple button and I need to increase the active area for that button to solve this problem. Alternatively moving it away from the edge of the screen might help
• Text size – I could add in an option to configure the font size, this makes a lot of sense. Making more room for the text on the screen might help too – perhaps an option to show/hide the controls or an alternative view when you rotate the iPhone to a landscape view?

I will be looking at the other issues raised as I make these changes. There was a suggestion to add more complex audio features (QRM, etc.) to make copying the code more realistic and this sounds like a great idea but I’ll need to do some reading on how to create those types of audio features on the iPhone.

Thanks again for the great support and I’ll keep working to improve the app so it meets everyone’s needs.

Simon, AA9PW.