Morse Resource

It turns out that neither problem was hard to fix. I changed the sample rate and tested on my available players. Let me know if it doesn’t work for you. This cuts the mp3 files size to less than 20% of what it was and will improve download times.

I also fixed the dates in the RSS feed so that the files should show up with the correct dates instead of all showing up with the date that the feed was updated.

Comments, bug reports - all welcome  at the email address in the left column of the home page.

I’ve tested files created with a sample rate of 8KSpS instead of the current 44.1KSpS, and they don’t play correctly on itunes for windows. When I have some time I’ll investigate that further, but until that’s solved we’re stuck with the large mp3 files.

Also, I found that I’m incorrectly generating the rss feeds and listing the current time as the creation time stamp for each file every time the feed is regenerated. This causes the same file to show up every day as being new, when it’s not really. I expect to be able to fix this as soon as I have a little time to spend on it.

Recently I’ve moved the podcast generation to a machine that should be able to stay up all the time, and this has resulted in daily updates of the feeds. This is how it was supposed to work, but I ended up hosting on a dual boot machine that needed to spend a lot of time booted into the ‘wrong’ image for generating podcasts.

Today I fixed a problem in the RSS generation that may not have affected anyone, except possibly those who get the podcasts through the itunes store. I also added a “cover art” image to the feeds to dress them up a little. I added some error detection also, so that particular problem can’t happen again without me knowing about it.

What’s coming up in the future? I’d still like to try changing the audio sample rate to something lower, in order to reduce the mp3 file size. In keeping with my principal of not changing too much at a time, I’ll let everything run like this for a while and then try that.

I’ve heard from a number of people who enjoy the podcasts, and I really enjoy hearing from you. It’s one thing to see the subscription numbers going up, and quite another to hear from people about them. Please let me know of any problems or things that don’t seem right to you. There are too many clients out there for me to test with, and I want to know when things don’t work for you.

Oh, one more thing - Only the 5WPM and 12WPM feeds were appearing in the itunes store. I’m not sure whether I never submitted them or whether they were dropped due to my non-compliant rss feeds. In any case, all six feeds in rates from 5WPM to 30WPM are in the itunes store now, or will be within a day or two.

I’m almost ready to go live with the new system. This is much improved, and written with ease of maintenance in mind. The old system was basically a prototype that grew as I gained understanding of how to do it, and was pretty fragile in terms of code changes having unintended effects.

The new system is much simpler, has about 1/4 the code, and doesn’t use a database. Plus, all sound file generation is done on another host where I have easy access.

There will be at least a few days of testing and settling in, so please be patient and let me know of any problems. I really enjoyed hearing from people who missed the feeds, it’s hard for me to tell whether there’s really anyone out there except for the email I get. Stand by for a mailing list that I will use only for site announcements about events like this recent outage.

I’m going to reduce the sample rate of the mp3 files soon. I used to have the podcasts at a 8,000 sample-per-second rate, but some players had problems with that. I changed it to 44,100 SPS, which is the CD ausio standard. That made the files HUGE. I’ve read up, and 8,000 SPS was not supportted in some early mp3 stadards. I’ll try a rate that’s been supported in all mp3 standards. If you have problems, let me know. Symptoms include very fast or slow playback, or messages about an unsupported rate.

I’ve added a lot of new information in the RSS feed using itunes-specific tags. This should provide a lot more information about track length, etc. I’ll even include “cover art” when I have time to design something.

One more thing I’ve considered, which is possible with the new system is to send out bulletins about morseresource in morse as part of the feed. These would be appropriately labeled in the title and text, so there should be no confusing them with the quotes. I’d put them in the same feeds with the quotes. These would be infrequent and pertaining to the site. Email me if you have an opinion about this.

Thanks for the support, and I hope I’m back to normal operation here soon.

Steve AI4QR

I’m aware that there are problems with the podcast generation, and apparently there has been for days, although I just became aware of it. I’ll investigate this as soon as I can and see what I can do.

I’ve made two changes that make it a lot easier to listen to the code generated for the podcasts and on the generator page.

The first is that I rewrote the morse generation code to use ‘raised cosine’ keying. This sounds more like a good transmitter, and is easier on the ears. I’ve set the rise and fall times to 10mS.

The second is that I changed the sample rate for the audio files from 8KHz to 44.1KHz (same as ausio CDs). This solved the compatibility problem with various audio players, but also made the mp3 files much larger. The lower the code speed, the longer the file. Let me know if this is a real hardship for you,

The changes will happen over the next few days as the daily files are generated, and in four days all files on all feeds should be in the new format.

The 25WPM and 30WPM feeds are live now, and accessible from the ‘podcasts’ page.

I noticed that the mp3 file do not play correctly on some media players. This is true for all feeds, not just the new ones. I’m researching this.

If you’re going to be at the hamfest in Huntsville, drop me a line - I’ll be there all weekend.

In the process of setting up for 25wpm and 30 wpm feeds, I discovered that the 20wpm feed was being generated with farnsworth timing of 20 wpm and character timing of 18 wpm. If that feed seems suddenly harder to copy, that’s why. I’m sorry.

Those new feeds should go live soon - I’m testing now.
I’m going to try to get the raised cosine keying in soon, it really makes it easier on the ears than the code I’m using now, which has zero rise and fall time.

And the final feature that’s been requested but not implemented is to have the text embedded in the mp3 files, the way that notes and/or lyrics are in music files. I’m going to try.

Wow, Thanks to The Make Blog for the link!

For all the Makers out there who don’t have an amateur radio license, I’d like to say:

It’s fun.

The barrier to entry is fairly low (you don’t have to know morse code for your first license test).

You can participate even if you don’t have a radio, through Echolink

More information can be found at the ARRL site here

I should know better, but I pushed the changes live, knowing that I’m going to be mostly unavailable to fix any problems over the weekend.

But, none of the changes I made should touch the podcast functionality, so even if there are problems they should be unaffected.

If you see any problems, please let me know.

Thanks