CW Practice

An Omarchy shell plugin for amateur radio operators practicing Morse code (CW) copy. Sends random characters as an audio sidetone and reveals what was sent only after a selectable delay — so you copy by ear first, then check yourself.

Features

• Start/Pause — one button; the bar pill lights up while a run is active.
• Character selection — letters, numbers, and punctuation as toggleable grids (with All/None per group).
• Speed — 5–40 WPM, single-slider PARIS timing (dit = 1.2/WPM seconds).
• Reveal delay — 0–5 s in 0.5 s steps (snapped). Characters appear in the history only after the delay, so you're not relying on instantly seeing them.
• History — received characters wrap across the panel width; spaces mark word gaps. Clearable.
• Word gaps — toggleable: occasionally a 7-dit pause and a space, like words in real text.
• Sidetone — 400–800 Hz tone and volume sliders.
• Live settings — speed, tone, volume, word gaps, and character selection changes apply on the next character while a run is active (no restart, no gap in the audio). Reveal-delay changes apply to newly received characters; already-queued characters keep the delay they were received with.

Installation

omarchy plugin add https://github.com/crueber/omarchy-cw-practice.git

Then enable it on the bar (if it is not placed automatically):

omarchy plugin enable crueber.cwpractice

The "CW" pill appears in the bar after the shell reloads.

Removal

omarchy plugin remove crueber.cwpractice

Or delete ~/.config/omarchy/plugins/crueber.cwpractice/ and remove the widget from your bar layout in ~/.config/omarchy/shell.json, then restart the shell (omarchy restart shell). Optionally also delete ~/.local/state/omarchy/cwpractice/ (persisted settings).

How it works

Panel.qml runs cw_player.py as a long-lived child process. The player generates the sidetone with proper PARIS timing, streams raw PCM to pacat, and prints each character to stdout as its audio finishes playing. The panel queues each reported character and reveals it into the history after the configured delay.

While a run is active, settings changes are sent to the player over stdin as SET key=value lines (wpm, tone, volume, pool, word-gaps); the player applies them at the next character boundary, so the audio never restarts. Delay changes are panel-side and apply to newly received characters.

State

Settings live at ~/.local/state/omarchy/cwpractice/state.json (read with a size-bounded, symlink- and FIFO-safe dd process; written atomically via mktemp + mv).

IPC

The plugin registers IPC functions. Opening the panel and reading the history are always available; the state-changing functions are disabled by default so no local process can start audio or change settings without a panel interaction:

omarchy-shell crueber.cwpractice open     # open the panel
omarchy-shell crueber.cwpractice history  # print revealed characters

To opt in to scripting (e.g. from keybindings or another widget), add "allowIpcControl": true to the widget entry in ~/.config/omarchy/shell.json (or run omarchy bar set crueber.cwpractice allowIpcControl true):

omarchy-shell crueber.cwpractice start    # start practice
omarchy-shell crueber.cwpractice stop     # pause practice
omarchy-shell crueber.cwpractice set wpm 25           # live-set a value
omarchy-shell crueber.cwpractice set pool ABC123     # live-set the pool
omarchy-shell crueber.cwpractice set delay 2000      # reveal delay (ms)
omarchy-shell crueber.cwpractice set tone 650        # also: volume, word-gaps

Development

• QML files hot-reload on save; after editing Model.js or cw_player.py, run omarchy restart shell.
• Model.js is pure JS — its state parsing/clamping is testable with any JS runtime.
• PATTERNS in Model.js and MORSE in cw_player.py MUST stay in sync.
• Validate: omarchy plugin validate ~/.config/omarchy/plugins/crueber.cwpractice
• Check for load errors: journalctl --user (grep for the plugin id).

Requirements

python3, pacat (PulseAudio tools) — both ship with Omarchy.