cwtool is a command line program to help you learn and practice Morse code.
Morse code is often known as Carrier Wave or CW hence the name
cwtool - a tool for generating CW.
It has 4 main modes which are described below:
- cwtool keymorse - play keystrokes from all applications as Morse code (Linux only)
- cwtool ncwtester - measure your reaction times when decoding Morse code
- cwtool play - play Morse code from the command line or a file
- cwtool rss - turn an RSS feed into Morse code
cwtool is a self contained binary. It needs no installation. Just
download it and run it.
Download the relevant binary from
Or alternatively if you have Go installed use
go get github.com/ncw/cwtool
and this will build the binary in $GOPATH/bin.
Or if you want to hack on the source code, use git to clone the
repository then go build to build the code from within that
directory.
This is free software under the terms of MIT the license (check the LICENSE file).
The project website is at:
There you can file bug reports, ask for help or contribute patches.
- Nick Craig-Wood M5NCW [email protected]
Here is the full documentation for each command of the cwtool.
Show help for cwtool commands.
Cwtool provides a suite of Morse code tools.
-h, --help help for cwtool
-v, --verbose Verbose debugging
- cwtool completion - Generate the autocompletion script for the specified shell
- cwtool keymorse - Snoop on all keypresses and turn into Morse code
- cwtool ncwtester - See how your Morse receiving is going
- cwtool play - Play Morse code from the command line or file
- cwtool rss - Fetch RSS and turn into Morse code
Generate the autocompletion script for the specified shell
Generate the autocompletion script for cwtool for the specified shell. See each sub-command's help for details on how to use the generated script.
-h, --help help for completion
-v, --verbose Verbose debugging
- cwtool - Show help for cwtool commands.
- cwtool completion bash - Generate the autocompletion script for bash
- cwtool completion fish - Generate the autocompletion script for fish
- cwtool completion powershell - Generate the autocompletion script for powershell
- cwtool completion zsh - Generate the autocompletion script for zsh
Snoop on all keypresses and turn into Morse code
This command listens to all key presses from all applications and turns them into Morse code.
It only runs on Linux at the moment.
It is intended as an aid for learning Morse code, or possibly an assistive aid.
NB it will echo sensitive things such as passwords as Morse code so beware if using in a public setting.
Since it snoops key presses from all applications, it requires root
privileges. It will use sudo to start a key listener subprocess as
root so expect a sudo prompt. It will not work unless sudo is
installed.
It will listen to all keyboards it finds (technically input devices
with an A button!).
Use --wpm to set the words per minute of the Morse code generated.
For example to play all keypresses at 30 WPM
cwtool keymorse --wpm 30
cwtool keymorse [flags]
-c, --channels int channels to generate (default 1)
--farnsworth float Increase character spacing to match this WPM
--frequency float HZ of Morse (default 600)
-h, --help help for keymorse
--out string WAV file for output instead of speaker
-s, --samplerate int sample rate in samples/s (default 8000)
--wpm float WPM to send at (default 25)
-v, --verbose Verbose debugging
- cwtool - Show help for cwtool commands.
See how your Morse receiving is going
This measures and keep track of your Morse code learning progress.
It sends Morse characters for you to receive and times how quickly you receive each one.
It can send a group of characters and you can select which characters are sent.
The statistics show the 50%/75%/90% percentile timings.
After a round it complete it will show the cumulative statistics.
It is configured with command line flags.
All stats are stored in the file specified by --log for analysis.
Setting --group can send multiple characters at once - it waits for
them all to be received before carrying on.
cwtool ncwtester [flags]
-c, --channels int channels to generate (default 1)
--cutoff duration If set, ignore stats older than this
--farnsworth float Increase character spacing to match this WPM
--frequency float HZ of Morse (default 600)
--group int Send letters in groups this big (default 1)
-h, --help help for ncwtester
--letters string Letters to test (default "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789.=/,?")
--log string CSV file to log attempts (default "ncwtesterstats.csv")
--out string WAV file for output instead of speaker
-s, --samplerate int sample rate in samples/s (default 8000)
--wpm float WPM to send at (default 25)
-v, --verbose Verbose debugging
- cwtool - Show help for cwtool commands.
Play Morse code from the command line or file
This plays Morse code from the command line or from a file with the
--file flag or from stdin with the --stdin flag.
cwtool play [flags]
-c, --channels int channels to generate (default 1)
--farnsworth float Increase character spacing to match this WPM
--file string File to play Morse from (optional)
--frequency float HZ of Morse (default 600)
-h, --help help for play
--out string WAV file for output instead of speaker
-s, --samplerate int sample rate in samples/s (default 8000)
--stdin If set play Morse from stdin
--wpm float WPM to send at (default 25)
-v, --verbose Verbose debugging
- cwtool - Show help for cwtool commands.
Fetch RSS and turn into Morse code
This fetches an RSS feed parses it and plays the items as Morse code.
Here are some examples of RSS feeds which can be passed to the --url
flag. These are easy to find - just search for the name of the
publication + RSS.
http://feeds.bbci.co.uk/news/uk/rss.xml
http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/HomePage.xml
http://rss.cnn.com/rss/cnn_topstories.rss
https://news.ycombinator.com/rss
http://feeds.wired.com/wired/index
Most RSS, Atom and JSON feed types are supported.
The following info is played from the feed. BT is the Morse prosign.
- Title
BT - Description of feed
BT(if--descriptionis used)
Then for each item
- NR #
BT(# is a number starting from 1 and incrementing) - Title of item
BT - Description of item
BT(if--descriptionis used)
This plays the title of the RSS feed and then the titles of each item in the feed.
Use --description to add the descriptions of each link in as well as
their titles.
For example to play the BBC UK News to a file at 20 WPM but with 8 WPM Farnsworth spacing:
cwtool rss -v --url http://feeds.bbci.co.uk/news/uk/rss.xml --wpm 20 --farnsworth 8 --out bbc.wav
cwtool rss [flags]
-c, --channels int channels to generate (default 1)
--description If set add the description too
--farnsworth float Increase character spacing to match this WPM
--frequency float HZ of Morse (default 600)
-h, --help help for rss
--out string WAV file for output instead of speaker
-s, --samplerate int sample rate in samples/s (default 8000)
--url string URL to fetch RSS from
--wpm float WPM to send at (default 25)
-v, --verbose Verbose debugging
- cwtool - Show help for cwtool commands.
Generate the autocompletion script for bash
Generate the autocompletion script for the bash shell.
This script depends on the 'bash-completion' package. If it is not installed already, you can install it via your OS's package manager.
To load completions in your current shell session:
source <(cwtool completion bash)
To load completions for every new session, execute once:
cwtool completion bash > /etc/bash_completion.d/cwtool
cwtool completion bash > $(brew --prefix)/etc/bash_completion.d/cwtool
You will need to start a new shell for this setup to take effect.
cwtool completion bash
-h, --help help for bash
--no-descriptions disable completion descriptions
-v, --verbose Verbose debugging
- cwtool completion - Generate the autocompletion script for the specified shell
Generate the autocompletion script for fish
Generate the autocompletion script for the fish shell.
To load completions in your current shell session:
cwtool completion fish | source
To load completions for every new session, execute once:
cwtool completion fish > ~/.config/fish/completions/cwtool.fish
You will need to start a new shell for this setup to take effect.
cwtool completion fish [flags]
-h, --help help for fish
--no-descriptions disable completion descriptions
-v, --verbose Verbose debugging
- cwtool completion - Generate the autocompletion script for the specified shell
Generate the autocompletion script for powershell
Generate the autocompletion script for powershell.
To load completions in your current shell session:
cwtool completion powershell | Out-String | Invoke-Expression
To load completions for every new session, add the output of the above command to your powershell profile.
cwtool completion powershell [flags]
-h, --help help for powershell
--no-descriptions disable completion descriptions
-v, --verbose Verbose debugging
- cwtool completion - Generate the autocompletion script for the specified shell
Generate the autocompletion script for zsh
Generate the autocompletion script for the zsh shell.
If shell completion is not already enabled in your environment you will need to enable it. You can execute the following once:
echo "autoload -U compinit; compinit" >> ~/.zshrc
To load completions in your current shell session:
source <(cwtool completion zsh)
To load completions for every new session, execute once:
cwtool completion zsh > "${fpath[1]}/_cwtool"
cwtool completion zsh > $(brew --prefix)/share/zsh/site-functions/_cwtool
You will need to start a new shell for this setup to take effect.
cwtool completion zsh [flags]
-h, --help help for zsh
--no-descriptions disable completion descriptions
-v, --verbose Verbose debugging
- cwtool completion - Generate the autocompletion script for the specified shell
