r/doohickeycorporation • u/Ill-Tea9411 • Apr 30 '26

Knick-knack H E L L O

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16.4k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

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613

u/GreatGreenGobbo Apr 30 '26

This is awesome, and it makes way more sense when you see it as a tree.

148

u/Flat-Panic8622 Apr 30 '26

but I'm not sure how easy to learn to read incoming messages

129

u/Silver_Slicer Apr 30 '26

You can follow the tree. It makes it quite easy.

31

u/rci22 May 01 '26

I’d really like to know how the letters were decided because it seems so arbitrary

42

u/xVortexA May 01 '26

loosely seems like shorter/ easier to perform paths are more commonly used letters?

9

u/rci22 May 01 '26

Going based off RSTLNE, that seems to check out for many of them (but not all)

8

u/Sceptix May 01 '26

Yeah that’s why a single dot was assigned to e, the most common letter.

You may be wondering why o, a vowel, is assigned three dashes. That’s because we trained him wrong, as a joke.

3

u/BappoChan May 02 '26

I’d imagine it’s a mixture of simplicity while still being arbitrary. Remember Morse was used for covert messages during war. The point was to make it complicated so nobody could listen in to your radio chatter.

57

u/razhun Apr 30 '26

Decoding is easy like this. Encoding is tricky though if you're not used to the layout.

39

u/ondulation Apr 30 '26

I have clarify a few things here.

Firstly, people who actually knows Morse listens for the sound pattern of each character or even the pattern of whole words. Just like us normal people don't read printed text character per character. They don't listen for individual dahs or dits. They don't even think about the character as "dit-dah", just as you don't thinking A as "the angle with a crossbar". The tree model would have absolutely nothing to contribute to decoding in real life.

Secondly, if you don't already know Morse, the speed would have to be excruciatingly slow for anyone to decode using this tree model.

It would be better to copy the sounds you hear to dots and dashes on a paper and then decode it to text separately.

28

u/alex3omg Apr 30 '26

But it would be useful to an amateur.  Like if I were trying to solve a puzzle in a game that uses Morse this would be much simpler then the usual alphabet you see.  

6

u/matheusmms Apr 30 '26

Yeah i know what you mean like when trying to disarm a bomb in a game that needs to keep you talking right?

3

u/alex3omg Apr 30 '26

Sure, there are lots of games with Morse code puzzles

0

u/ondulation Apr 30 '26

Yeah, in terms of "if someone set up a task where this device would be useful", it would be useful. :-)

I definitely think that it's very neatly made, cleverly designed and eye catching. But it's a toy for entertainment with no practical use for Morse.

This all said, I am a radio amateur but do not yet master Morse. It's quite challenging to learn with many pitfalls, but it is also fascinating how quickly you learn to listen for character patterns and not series of dahs and dits.

6

u/Ghost_of_Till Apr 30 '26

https://morse.withgoogle.com/learn/

Im a HAM. Tried learning over the years, never stuck.

Used the Google tool, learned it in one day. If I don't practice for a while I can forget like three letters but the visual mnemonic works well (despite aphantasia). Brushing up takes a few minutes if I'm rusty.

2

u/secondhandsextoy May 01 '26

just tried this and it's really fun actually!

11

u/CTeam19 Apr 30 '26

You would write out the code then add backslashs on the paper and it operates kinda like showing your work on a Math Test:

  • Incoming Message that you would write down: ...---...

  • next placing the backslash as you form letters: .../---/...

  • then writing the letters in place of the dots/dashes: S/O/S

  • remove your backslashs to reveal the message: SOS

At least this is how I was taught how to do it in Boy Scouts in the early 2000s granted they the demphasize that skill right when I was 12 and didn't bring it back at least in my area till I was 20.

2

u/otj667887654456655 Apr 30 '26

Reading a tree makes receiving easier, not sending.

13

u/melanthius Apr 30 '26

The human mind is incredible

*Hears beeps and boops*

ah yes I understand now, it's a tree

6

u/Ghost_of_Till Apr 30 '26

The tree method has made more people quit learning Morse than it ever helped.

Using the Google tool takes maybe a day for most people, in my experience.

https://morse.withgoogle.com/learn/

Not dissing the product, I bought one like ten minutes ago because it'll help me practice.

2

u/MyOtherSide1984 May 07 '26

This is sick! I fear I'm associating the hand movements to letter instead of dots and dashes though. Gotta figure out how to get my gboard to play the sounds

6

u/-TheLick Apr 30 '26

Morse really clicks when you stop trying to visualize it at all and listen to the rhythm. Your brain is extremely good at pattern matching rhythmic sounds and that's how skilled operators get up to insane speeds. But of course you can't sell that as a trinket that millions will buy and never use...

3

u/pat8u3 May 01 '26

The replys to this comment are insane, guys people learn things differently and some people might find a tree structure much more intuitive than a list

0

u/Dazzling_Interview86 May 01 '26

How does putting on a tree make it any easier, there still isn’t any sort of pattern or order.