My Nintendo 3DS IC-705 CW Keyer!

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ハム無線家の皆さん、こんばんは！

So if you are averse to odd, niche amateur radio stuff and don’t want to see the result of insanity (aka a LOT of days of hard work and toil in reality) look away now!

Have you ever been operating portable and thought to yourself, oh I forgot my straight key, paddle, bug, Casio calculator (delete as applicable) what will I do? Then realised you have your Nintendo 3DS that you always carry around with you sat idle because Nintendo turned all the servers off years ago?

EXACTLY. SO HAVE I.

So I decided to do something about it and made my very own homebrew (and vibe coded) CW software exclusively for the Nintendo 3DS console!

Presenting to you… the ICOM IC-705 Morse Communicator 3DS software by EI3LH!

DISCLAIMER: This is unofficial software and not endorsed by anyone or anything at all in the entire universe. It is made as homebrew for my love of CW and Japan and the culture and things I grew up with in the 1980’s and 1990’s. In addition, this software is incomplete but almost finished. I am suffering trying to get the AP part to work as the 3DS is hyperfussy. This is why I am posting my work in progress in the hopes someone in the community with an egg for a head (and thus FAR more talented than I at this coding lark) might be able to help. I am also adding in some features I haven’t discussed in my blog post and videos. More on those another day.

I have provided a full write up here which will be live at 19:45pm IST tonight:

https://ei3lh.eu/2026/08/20/my-morse-code-keyer-homebrew-software-for-the-nintendo-3ds/

In addition, I have three separate videos premiering on my YouTube ‘channel’ (aka a dump for my stuff to save me hosting bandwidth!) at 19:45pm onwards tonight. There you will see three videos:

ONE: A full tour video on real live hardware aka my actual New Nintendo 3DS console. This is poor quality but that’s because my GoPro is ancient, sorry, I tried my best. It’s to show you how the software acts, sounds and feels in real life:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kE9oZg7i4Rk

TWO: A full tour video using a Linux 3DS emulator. Unfortunately the emulator has no sound, but I made the full tour so you can see the software in motion better and also see all of the Easter eggs i hid in the software!

THREE: A 10 second fully-AI-generated television advertisement for the 3DS software I made. It is in the style of a 1980’s Japanese television advertisement for video game software:

FOUR: Lastly, I made the AI-generated image at the top of this post which is again, a nod to 1980’s Japanese video game magazine adverts. You’ll note the ‘game’ is due to be released on October 9th 1984. That’s like waiting for Parasol Stars to come out on the Commodore 64! (look it up, the story is mind-blowing).

I will of course be making this software open source for everyone to rip to shreds and laugh at me and all the rest of it. I do hope though the community can help me with the connectivity piece. I have other options but if I don’t make a direct connection the latency will kill it off as a live keyer.

Anyway, enjoy the premiere videos and blog article tonight (glitzy!). Thanks everyone and 72 44 as always.

QRP CW 4EVA IDST!

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BREAKTHROUGH!! :star_struck:

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IT WORKS!!!

WOOOO!

That was torturous work. About 170+ pcaps and analysis (that part I can manage, as tedious as it is).

The IC-705 will now transmit dits and dahs and auto key, but it is a bit all over the place how it is handling it so I’ve work to do but still, a massive milestone today for the 3DS IC-705 Morse Communicator.

Please don’t look forward to it! :blush:

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Absolutely brilliant! I can only guess how many 3DSes are now going to be dug out of dusty attics to be reborn as rig controllers and keyers.

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Haha! Thanks for the positivity! I hope to see lots of jamons out portable hammering away on calculators and Nintendo 3DS consoles soon!

Yesterday was massive. It was getting it over the 5th hurdle of the 7 step SYN ACK AUTH sequence that the icom uses. It took FOREVER to get it to work.

As you can see from the second screenshot, I added a temporary debug status so I could see the sequence in real time and every time it dropped at S5 so I had to run a jillion pcaps to try and get it sorted. When that S7 kicked in and the status changed to Online I nearly wept tears of joy! :rofl:

Now it will key up like a cootie but I need to sort out how the ic-705 handles CI-V data and queuing the keying.

The good news is the latency isn’t an issue (at the moment). The problem is the flurry of keying backup clearance when you start to go 25wpm and up to QRQ+. I’m working on it and analysing how small changes affect the CI-V queue processing. It is getting there but is arduous work.

This is currently all being done via a 3DS emu in Linux purely because it makes my life easier for troubleshooting. The software works on the real deal and I am pretty confident once I can make the 3DS connect to the ic-705 AP properly we will be in business. I might be able to get around the fussy implementation Nintendo used by putting in a fake proxy.

I’ve not got that far yet. What I want to do first is get the networking boxed off in the emu and then port it over to a *.3dsx with the AP workaround.

Another thing I want to add at a later date is some sort of implementation of Streetpass that the 3DS used to use. My idea is to make a homebrew Streetpass to trade QSO cards with others, or use the NFC implementation to trade data with fellow jamons etc. I’ve also got ideas for the mini ‘game’ Easter Egg as well but that is way down the list.

I dunno, it is all stuff jangling around in my head for now! Plus I have the Casio stuff to finish off too as well as other CW stuff that I keep scribbling down. Lots to do before icom and Nintendo issue me with a summons! :face_with_peeking_eye:

I just hope Jamons, CW fans, gamers and folks that love Macross, Lynn Minmay, Kimagure Orange Road and Urban Square like this silly project! :sweat_smile::blush::+1:

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Good luck with it, I love novelty ham radio projects like this. How cool would it be to pull out your 3DS at a ham event like a Hamfest and start QSOing.

Meanwhile, in 45 years of following amateur radio I don’t think I’ve every hear amateur operators referred to as Jamons, but it makes perfect sense. As for ‘key up like a cootie’, I had to look that one up and still not sure I get it.

One final task, to keep the Nintendo vibe you should compose a dinky little splash screen tune with an encoded greeting in morse.

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Precisely! :blush:

I had some time yesterday to work on it again and am still battling the CI-V message buffering. It’s almost there now though, fingers crossed.

The one thing I am unsure I will be able to sort out is the connection of the 3DS to the 705 AP. Directly, that is.

I have an idea though that does add am additional hop, but the WiFi hop adding additional latency should still remain within tolerance range so currently a non-issue. It means it won’t be as beautifully simple as a direct connection, but it will be as close as possible and still immensely portable and lightweight enough. I will know one way or the other this week hopefully.

Once I have this all buttoned up and packed to my Github repo, my hope is someone with far more talent at this stuff than I will look at the code and go “oh, just do this” and then upload something gloriously brilliant that makes it all work.

Tis the beauty of community. :blush::ok_hand:

I’ve had a go at that and went a different route. I might look to add something like that elsewhere though.

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@VK3HN don’t get excited and dig out your 3DS just yet but…

:star_struck:

1 jillion bonus points if anyone can guess the title screen music I edited in to a loop.

Also, no I am not on an aeroplane, I had my 3D printer running and a fan blowing. :sweat_smile::face_with_peeking_eye:

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