Free Software « Silveira Neto

You write in your computer, sends a message thought USB and Arduino translates it into a Morse code.

Just a Arduino board with a buzzer connected at the digital output 12 (one wire in the ground and the other in the 12).

Arduino

I tried to make the code as general as possible so you can easily adapt it for anthers ways of transmitting a Morse code. To do that you just need to rewrite a few functions.

                                                  +-------------------+
                                                  | 3) Interpretation |
                                                  +-------------------+
                                                  |   2) Translation  |
+-------------------+                             +-------------------+
|     Computer      |<========USB (Serial)=======>|     1) Reading    |
+-------------------+                             +-------------------+

Reads a character from Serial. Main function loop().
Translate a ascii char into a Morse code using a reference table. A letter 'K' becomes a string word "-.-". Function say_char().
Interpret the Morse word as light and sound. Mostly at function say_morse_word(). The Interpretation needs 5 functions to say all Morse words, dot(), dash(), shortgap(), mediumgap() and intragap().

For a more details on Morse code I strongly recommend the English Wikipedia article on it.

int led = 13;                   // LED connected to digital pin 13
int buzzer = 12;                // buzzer connected to digital pin 12
int unit = 50;                  // duration of a pulse
 
char * morsecode[] = {
    "-----",  // 0
    ".----",  // 1
    "..---",  // 2
    "...--",  // 3
    "....-",  // 4
    ".....",  // 5
    "-....",  // 6 
    "--...",  // 7
    "---..",  // 8
    "----.",  // 9
    "---...", // :
    "-.-.-.", // ;
    "",       // < (there's no morse for this simbol)
    "-...-",  // =
    "",       // > (there's no morse for this simbol)
    "..--..", // ?
    ".--._.", // @
    ".-",     // A
    "-...",   // B
    "-.-.",   // C
    "-..",    // D
    ".",      // E
    "..-.",   // F
    "--.",    // G
    "....",   // H
    "..",     // I
    ".---",   // J
    "-.-",    // K
    ".-..",   // L
    "--",     // M
    "-.",     // N
    "---",    // O
    ".--.",   // P
    "--.-",   // Q
    ".-.",    // R
    "...",    // S
    "-",      // T
    "..-",    // U
    "...-",   // V
    ".--",    // W
    "-..-",   // X
    "-.--",   // Y
    "--.."    // Z
};
 
void setup() {
  pinMode(led, OUTPUT);
  pinMode(buzzer, OUTPUT);
  Serial.begin(9600);
}
 
void say_morse_word(char * msg){
  int index = 0;
  while(msg[index]!='\0'){
    // say a dash
    if(msg[index]=='-'){
      dash();
    }
    // say a dot
    if(msg[index]=='.'){
      dot();
    }
    // gap beetween simbols
    intragap();
    index++;
  }
}
 
// beep
void beep(int time){
  int i;
  int t = 100; // period of the wav. bigger means lower pitch.
  int beepduration = (int)((float)time/t*1800);
  digitalWrite(led, HIGH);
  for(i=0;i<beepduration;i++){
    digitalWrite(buzzer, HIGH);
    delayMicroseconds(t);
    digitalWrite(buzzer, LOW);
    delayMicroseconds(t);
  }
  delay(time);
}
 
// silence
void silence(int time){
  digitalWrite(led, LOW);
  delay(time);
}
 
// general procedure for .
void dot() {
  beep(unit);
}
 
// general procedure for -
void dash() {
  beep(unit*3);
}
 
// gap between dots and dashes
void intragap() {
  silence(unit);
}
 
// gap between letters
void shortgap() {
  silence(3*unit);
}
 
// gap be  tween words
void mediumgap() {
  silence(7*unit);
}
 
void say_char(char letter){
  if((letter>='0')&&(letter<='Z')&&(letter!='<')&&(letter!='>')){
    Serial.print(morsecode[letter-'0']);
    Serial.print(' ');
    say_morse_word(morsecode[letter-'0']);
    shortgap();
  } else {
    if(letter==' '){
      Serial.print(" \\ ");
      mediumgap();
    }else{
      Serial.print("X");
    }
  }
}
 
void loop(){
  if(Serial.available()){
    say_char((char)Serial.read());
  }
}

Additionally you can put another function to say entire strings, like say_string("HELLO WORLD")

void say_string(char * asciimsg){
  int index = 0;
  char charac;
  charac = asciimsg[index];
  while(charac!='\0'){
    say_char(morsecode[charac-'0']);
    Serial.println(morsecode[charac-'0']);
    charac = asciimsg[++index];
    shortgap();
  }
}

You can use the Arduino IDE itself or any other program that talks with the serial port USB.

Me and people talking about OpenSolaris

InfoBrasil is a tradicional IT business event in my city. This year we got a space for Open Source and Free Software where I did a presentation about OpenSolaris. I posted our grid yesterday.

That was my first presentation about OpenSolaris so I focused to showing that OpenSolaris 2008.5 is a GNU/OpenSolaris distribution but you can access features like ZFS, DTrace and Zones. I used those slides that Tirthankar Das, Solaris Cluster Engineering at Sun Microsystems, did for FISL 2008. Most of the audience was composed from students and they showed very impressed with ZFS. In my next OpenSolaris presentation I’ll try to focus more on ZFS demos. Someone in the audience did a random number generator code live. We used it to prize some OpenSolaris gifts like tshirts and sticks.