First they came for the signal flags, now they are coming for morse blinkers…but you have to admit, it the day where the average recruit has way more experience in text messages than in dots and dashes, it makes sense.
The Office of Naval Research TechSolutions-sponsored Flashing Light to Text Converter (FLTC) uses a ship’s existing signal lamp to both send and receive optical lamp communications via an intuitive chat session on a tablet computer.
Sponsored by the Office of Naval Research’s (ONR) TechSolutions program, FLTC features (1) a camera that can be mounted atop a signal lamp and hone in on Morse code bursts from another lamp within view, and (2) a hand-held device or laptop computer connected to this camera to display text messages sent and received.
Linking the commercially available camera and device is a proprietary converter that uses specialized software algorithms to process incoming light flashes into high-frequency signals-and then convert those into text messages. To reply to a text, a Sailor can use the device to type a response that is sent back as a Morse code message via specially powered LED lights that flash automatically.
