Hacker News Reader

Comment by zackb | Hacker News Reader

I'm working on a morse code iOS app that can optionally use Force (3D) Touch. My dad had a stroke recently and is quarantined in a care facility. He can't talk but remembers morse code like a boss. He can't lift his finger off the screen to "tap" and there were no other morse apps out there for people with physical impairment. With this he's able to communicate... I've been coding for 15 years but this was life changing when it worked!

FOSS: https://github.com/zackb/forcecode

only TestFlight right now but AppStore soon under the name "Force Code"

View on HN

Congrats on the awesome project. In case you haven’t come across it ACAT [1] might be of interest, especially if word rate becomes a limiting factor in communication for you dad, or if he’s interested in using a computer. ACAT is highly flexible around how it accepts inputs. To that end, you might be able to take what you’ve done and open it up to a broader audience by writing an extension that turns the iPhone with force touch into an input sensor, with or without the use of Morse.

[1] https://github.com/intel/acat

Thanks, and thanks for showing me ACAT. I was not aware of it but looks interesting.

Hi, so many cool ideas in this thread but this one really caught my attention. As it happens I've been investigating solutions like this under an open source basis. Unfortunately I didn't pay enough attention to "marketing" so I was forced to quit due to lack of funding. Now my hands are sort of tied by a greedy copyright clause in my contract so I'm not sure how much I personally can do as I really want my work to be in the hands of the public.

One of my ideas is exactly using morse but more as a means to demonstrate a way to make a new input method learnable via a HUD.

Apart from that I'd think you might be interested in Dasher and that you should check out the solution that Stephen Hawking is using which happens to be open source.

I've put in quite a lot of thought into this and would love to discuss this with you. If you are interested please use contact form in link below or let me know how I can contact you.

http://tbf-rnd.life

Hi, thanks for sharing your website. You are doing interesting research.

hi thank you please fill in contact form and hop into the discord

This is fascinating. Dasher looks incredible. I was wondering where this thing was going to go (if anywhere) after this initial "use case". I will definitely look into this.

Thanks!

Consider an Apple Watch app/extension?

It could be incredibly useful to not have to pick up a phone to use, and probably would not be that difficult to port over.

If you need help, testing or advice feel free to contact me at claire at theoic dot me. I’m a bit of a Watch nut and do iOS programming for a living.

Really interesting use of force touch, not sure if the repo is meant to be public already, would suggest you add a README with a short description of the project, installation instructions and so on. Best of luck!

What a wonderful thing to read on another day in covid isolation. Very sorry to hear about your father. He must be beyond delighted with what you've made.

This is incredibly creative!! I wish you and your father the best of luck!

This actually sounds like a great way to learn it too, will be looking out for it in the App Store!!!

Thanks! It’s in the App Store now https://apps.apple.com/us/app/force-code-morse-with-force/id...

That's so awesome. Is he a ham?

Yes he is. Thanks!

Sorry, but what is a ham? a HAM radio operator or something else?

Correct (a HAM radio operator)

Yeah, IIUC, HAM dedicates its lower-fidelity bands to Morse.

The 'ham' in ham radio seems like it should be an acronym or something, but it's actually just short for 'ham-fisted' and doesn't need any special treatment. :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amateur_radio#Ham_radio

This is so cool! Love the name too.

Thank you all so much for all the feedback. This community is amazing.

Awesome.

Amazing!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com