Rick Nevill wrote:


Hello Garique, Dale, Frank, Michael and Gary,

I appreciate the ideas. I am not sure how to interpret some of the answers,
so let me give more details. I set up an MFJ-564 paddle into an MFJ-464
Keyer/Reader which converts the Morse into visible letters, and then feeding
that into a PC running HyperTerminal to display larger text.

I'll really show my ignorance here - It sounds like the "Iambic" function
must be in the keyer/reader and not in the paddle hardware (I didn't even
look for an IC chip on the MFJ-564 paddle)? So that means any pair of
switches I use will properly feed the keyer/reader? Then I just need to
find a switch that she can reliably press and release. Do I have it right
now?

That's about the size of it. If you press one paddle of an Iambic
keyer, it goes "didididididididit" until you release the paddle. If you
press the other paddle, it goes "dah dah dah dah dah dah", again, until
you release the paddle. If you press both paddles, it goes
"didahdidahdidah" until you release at least one paddle.

And yes, I checked out the eye reading software and the prices were high, up
to $30,000.

Ouch.

The above hardware was only about $300. If it works that will
be great.

ISTR the New Jersey QRP club had a "finger tapper" key at one point. I
have no direct knowledge of how durable the key was or what type of
force it was set up to need.

And now having dredged the address from the depths of my mind I can
report it can be seen at http://www.njqrp.org/tiptapper/index.html and
it's actually named the "Finger Tip Tapper". It might be worth a look.

HTH

de kg7yy
--
To design the perfect anti-Unix, write an operating system that thinks
it knows what you're doing better than you do. And then adds injury to
insult by getting it wrong.
- esr