flinch

go slowly

20 HP

A small wild animal in your rack, and it can see your hand. Reach for it fast and it bolts, and your sound goes with it. Come in slowly and it lets you. Spend time with it and it trusts you, and it keeps that with the power off.

The FLINCH panel: black, gold dots of a deer from straight on with its ears up, two eyes of bare circuit board, a small dark hole in its nose. SOOTHE, a lit button, on its forehead. FOOD, STARTLE, SOOTHE, THROAT and TRUST along the top, NEAR and ASIDE at its eyes, WILD, HIDE, APPETITE and SIZE down the sides, BOLTED and HEART either side of its muzzle, the big WARY knob on its neck, HIDE and WARY's jacks beside it, BLOOM and CALL in the bottom corners. flinch at the top, daylight noise at the bottom.

Your hand: your pointer over its face is your hand, and the middle of its face is the panel. Go slowly. On a phone, put a finger down at the edge of its face and draw it in; on a keyboard, tab to its face and use the arrow keys. Turn a knob: drag it or tap either side of it, roll the wheel over it or use the arrow keys; a double click puts it back. SOOTHE is a button: hold it.

A bass, a pad and drums in D minor at 118 BPM through FLINCH. Listen plays the patch from its top.

example patches

Its nerves, its voice and every out and light here are FLINCH's own code, running in your browser, and it remembers you in this browser. The rack round it is a stand-in. It comes round about sixty times as quickly here as on the module.

It can see your hand

A sensor looks out of the hole in its nose, about 45 cm out. What matters to it is how soon you'd arrive: come in so you'd get there in under a couple of seconds and it bolts, and the closer you are, the slower that means. A hand on its outer knobs, down the side of the module, is out of its sight.

When it goes

A foot on the ground, a cry, its feet going away. The eyes snap shut and what you've patched through it cuts to nothing. In the dark you can just hear its heart. It comes back as slowly as it stayed away, one eye first, your sound rising with it.

Taming it

Bring a hand in over ten seconds and hold it near, and it comes forward, your sound opens and it purrs. Every minute it lets you is kept, with the power off. A new one bolts at everything. One you've spent a month with stays out and lets you play it with your hand in the air. Stay away for weeks and it forgets you; months, and it goes feral.

Its voice and its appetite

What comes out

Inside

One board sits 10 mm behind the panel with everything on its front, the USB-C in a notch in its left edge. Each eye is ten cells in a black printed baffle, a white LED in each. The sensor has its own small board, plugged into two sockets, and looks out through a printed collar in the hole. The coin cell on the back counts the days.

The FLINCH panel: a hind from straight on in gold dots, one eye open, its knobs, jacks and SOOTHE on.

Drag it or use the arrow keys to turn it; click it to take it apart.

Specs

Format

Width
20 HP
Depth
20.8 mm behind the panel, plus the cable's plug
+12 V
about 60 mA at boot, 170 mA in use, 250 mA at the most (estimated)
−12 V
about 6 mA (estimated)
+5 V
not used
Controls
a big knob, 4 knobs, a lit button, your hand

I/O

FOOD
audio in, ±5 V, unclipped to ±9 V
THROAT
1 V an octave, −6 to +6 V, 24-bit, calibrated
STARTLE, SOOTHE
gates, past about 0.9 V
WARY, HIDE
CV, 5 V the whole way
BLOOM, CALL
audio out, ±5 V, a soft ceiling at 6.25 V
NEAR, TRUST
CV, 0 to 8 V
ASIDE
CV, ±5 V
BOLTED
gate, 0/5 V
HEART
trigger, 0/5 V, 5 ms

Engine

Brain
RP2350, two cores, 32-bit float, 46.875 kHz
Its nose
a 4 × 4 zone time-of-flight sensor, 60 frames a second, through a Ø8.5 mm hole
Reaction
about 0.1 to 0.16 s from a hand moving to the sound stopping (estimated); once it goes, down 40 dB in under 2 ms
Light
2 eyes, 20 cells, 20 white LEDs
Power cycle
TRUST is kept; a clock on a CR1220 counts the days away, with nothing to set