24 Jan 2026
I acquired a telegraph key:1
I turned it into a wireless Bluetooth keyboard by connecting it to an Adafruit ItsyBitsy:2
Never has it been more satisfying—or less private3—to type messages. Not since grade school have I been slower or had more spelling errors when typing messages.4
The Key(singular)board has two modes: “raw” and “alphanumeric”. In raw mode, the telegraph key’s state—pressed or unpressed—is segmented into a series of dot, dash, and space keystrokes. In alphanumeric mode, those dots and dashes are translated from Morse code into their corresponding alphanumeric character keystrokes. As a user, the raw mode acts as training wheels to calibrate against how tap durations translate into dots, dashes, and inter-tap pauses.5
One of my favorite aspects of the Telegraph Key(singular)board has been other people’s enthusiasm to give it a go. I added a quick “display incoming text” mode to
the flipdots board in my apartment to turn tapping typing into a spectator sport.6
I am very, very pleased with how this project turned out, and how usable and portable my key(singular)board is.
If I were cooler, I would have typed this blog post with it. Fortunately for this post’s legibility, I did not do that. On the other hand, I’d probably be better at Morse code if I had!
Instructions for building your own Key(singular)board are here.7 Let me know if you make one!
- Created: 2026-01-24
- Type: project-write-up
- Tags: hardware, houseplant-programming