Morse News

A small, no-bundler Morse code practice site that sends daily news headlines as CW audio using Farnsworth timing.

Run

npm install
npm start

Open http://localhost:3000 on a desktop, or from a phone on the same network using the host machine's LAN IP and port 3000.

Test

Install the Playwright-managed Chromium browser once after npm install, then run the test suite:

npm run install-test-deps
npm test

Playwright uses its own pinned Chromium build by default, even when Chrome is already installed on the system. CI runs the same browser-install script with --with-deps to install required Linux system packages as well.

Features

• Cached headline feed at /api/headlines, refreshed on Pacific 6-hour windows
• Generic source mix: NPR, New York Times, The Guardian World, and ScienceDaily
• Sports headline filtering and article links when the RSS feed provides a URL
• 30-day archive of headline snapshots with previous/next navigation
• Mobile-friendly practice interface
• 5, 7.5, 10, 15, 20, and 30 WPM presets plus custom character/effective practice speeds
• Farnsworth timing below 20 WPM: characters at 20 WPM, spacing stretched for slower selected speeds
• True faster timing above 20 WPM: characters and spacing both speed up
• 5/10/15 minute sessions
• Adjustable sidetone frequency
• Google Cast experiment: prebuilt MP3 streams for all headlines at 5/7.5/10/15/20/30 WPM

Notes

This intentionally avoids a build step. The frontend is plain HTML/CSS/JS and the server is a small Express app.

Headline cache and archive files are written to DATA_DIR, then RAILWAY_VOLUME_MOUNT_PATH, then local ./data as a fallback. For Railway persistence across deploys, mount a Railway Volume at /app/data; local development will keep using the repo's data/ directory.

The Express process owns headline refreshes. A server timer checks every 15 minutes and refreshes only when the cached snapshot is not from the current Pacific 6-hour window: midnight, 6 AM, noon, or 6 PM. Requests serve the current cache/archive and make sure the timer is running; they do not fetch RSS feeds inline.

After each headline refresh, the server also prebuilds Cast media for the current headline set: mono MP3 at 44.1 kHz / 48 kbps, 550 Hz, for 5/7.5/10/15/20/30 WPM. /api/cast-audio returns the manifest and path-versioned /api/cast-audio/:mediaVersion/:speedWpm.mp3 URLs for cached media files.