Hellschreiber FAQ

The Hellschreiber App for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch.

Want to monitor and send Hellschreiber (Feld Hell) transissions, without using a bulky computer? Hellschreiber lets you decode Feld Hell transmissions on your iPhone iPad, and iPod Touch. Just set your iPhone or iPad near a radio, tune in a transmission, and view the decoded text.

The slider lets you adjust the contrast of the received text. There is also a volume indicator.

You can also send Feld Hell transmissions as well! Just type in the text, and it is automatically sent. You can connect the audio output from the headphone jack to your transcewiver with your own cable.

To use this app, you need to feed the audio output from a your radio into the device. You can do this via one of several ways:

Set the device near the radio's speaker to pick up the audio. While easy to do, this is not ideal, as background noise can interfere with the audio, causing garbled decodes.
Plug headphones into the radio, and set one earphone near the mic. I find that with good quality headphones, this can work extremely well.
Use the microphone input jack of your device, by obtaining an appopriate cable and connecting the radio's line level output to the microphone input.
With the Camera Connection Kit, you can plug a USB sound input device into the iPad, and use a patch cable between it and the radio's audio output. This is by far the best solution.

You can use the volume indicator in the upper right corner to verify that audio is getting into your device, and that the volume level is appropriate.

If you are running iOS 7 or later, be sure to give the app permission to use the microphone. If you denied permission, you can always give it again by following these steps:

Open Settings app and go to "Privacy"
Select "Microphone" to get a list of all apps that have requested access to the microphone, and to control which apps have access to the microphone

If you're looking for a radio to use with the app, there are many different types to choose from. Take a look at our listing of radios to use with your app, to see several, along with some suggestions on how to choose a radio.

That's it!

Here are some details on directly connecting an audio line source to your iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch

Email your comments and questions to support@blackcatsystems.com

Last modified July 22, 2012