Morse key HID + ugly hack

Last year I found an East German key in a thrift store. The venerable MT50 used by many institutes during the existence of the GDR and produced right up to 1990. It basically is a Juncker key in a Bakelite enclosure with many seals. It also has passive components inside to eliminate sparking.

What I want to do with it, which differs from my other signalling key HID projects, is that I want it to be a single USB device that plugs in directly to a computer. So I need room inside of it for a HID capable Arduino type of micro and a small speaker that is loud enough to head on the outside (that will be the challenge I feel).

Downside is that this means I need to rip out all the passive components and slightly alter the Bakelite bottom part of the unit for it all the fit correctly. The reason I am okay with this, is because these units are still quite abundant and I am not gutting a museum piece here.

More to follow once I get the parts!

Keeping in style with the previous box, this still is a bit hacky but definitely more robust and polished. I got all the classics like hot glue, Q&D soldering, ad-hoc layout and sub-optimal connections, but it is all quite neat and fits in an old slide box. Here is the set!

The lid still needs some work as the paint does not adhere very well and it needs a hole for the beeper to be more audible, but this is basically it. Key goes in one side, USB goes out into a pjuter and there you have a morse keyboard ready to go. There is a nice led that lights up next to the jack input and the Pro Micro inside also produces an interesting light show. This is how it looks on the inside :

The led, jack socket, jack cord and beeper+connector are salvages parts and the case was a 10 cent thrift store item. Overall this build was pretty cheap, with the key included somewhere around 15 euros.

But at least I can now enjoy signing into my mail client OR hackaday.io log posts. so here goes.

CW YOU LATER

The key in this project is currently on lone to an educational institute with an interactive morse tutor for which I intend to write a new project page once that project is finished. For the moment I can not do that because it was commissioned.

This however left me in the position of not having a straight key at home! How can I live like that, you might wonder? Well, luckily there are apps to fix my morse cravings but these are not ideal.

As great fortune would have it, I recently found another key at a second hand store. It was, just like the last dirty and beaten up and in dire need of restoration. This short log is the first part of this particular keys journey.

Here is how I found it :

And this is the end result :

There will be more details on the origins of this object in future logs as well as the new digital sounder that is in the works.

This is a short demo of my Key, the pratice setup and commanding VIM.

I have spend a couple of hours yesterday trying to identify the brand, original application and/or the country of origin for my straight key and I have come up, again, empty handed.

It is quite possible that this key is the labour of love by an amateur telegraph enthusiast who took various design cues from various commercial and military keys, but it looks so purposefully build, it strikes me very much as a army/naval/maritime unit.

It could originally have had a cover of some sort or it could have been integrated into a telegraph set.

I have searched through thousands of pictures with queries selecting Russian, German, Japanese, Italian, American, Dutch and French straight keys, but this type has not popped out.

If anybody has a clue what the make and origin of this key is, please drop a hint!