Hand-to-Hand instant message communication: Revisiting Morse code

In this paper, we propose a novel vibration-based communication system for Bluetooth-equipped smartphones. Smartphones are commonly utilized through the display; however, sometimes users would like to exchange pieces of information with nearby peers, without shifting their focus from current task. Additionally, this enables communication in cases without visual or sound contact. For this purpose, we developed a novel application called Hand-to-Hand on Bluetooth Communication (H2BCom). We use the common gestures of tapping and touching the smartphone display for sending a Morse coded message over a Bluetooth channel. On the receiving side, the Morse coded message is presented as vibration of the smartphone. We show the design, implementation and evaluation of H2BCom on Android phones. In our user study, we found that using the Morse code was difficult for beginners, but the users´skill improved after taking a tutorial of the Morse code.