laika

keep her cool

20 HP

Her heart, going round the world in a tin can, is the clock of your patch. On the panel is her cabin, a small real capsule that really warms. Turn up the heat and she pants, her heart races, then it stumbles, and the metal takes its time to cool.

The LAIKA panel: black, with a small mongrel dog in gold, sitting front on in her harness, her ears up, looking up at a small aluminium capsule above her head. Round the capsule a faint glow, and round that a faint dotted circle. The big HEAT knob sits on her chest where the harness crosses, LAUNCH between her front paws, ORBIT, REACH, STATIC and SWING either side of her, and ten jacks down the edges.

The capsule: hold it, or the finger button, and your finger's on it; blow on it with the button. LAUNCH: press it. 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 a knob back. Nothing here uses your microphone or camera. The patches step on by themselves until you touch something.

A slow dark groove on her heart's clock, and the radio. Listen plays the patch from its top, or from where you've got to if you've touched anything.

example patches

The real one reads its capsule's metal and the case's air; here a model of the capsule warms and cools as designed, and your pointer on it is a finger. Her heart, the orbit and the radio are the module's own engine. The groove round her is a stand-in.

Her heart

A dog's heart, modelled, is the clock: each beat a trigger. It quickens on every in-breath and eases on the out, and it answers to everything that happens to her.

HEART: a trigger a beat: your kick, or the whole rack's clock.
CHEST: her heart itself, lub and dub, a low soft thump.
SWING: how far her breath swings her heart: fully left as even as a clock, fully right deep breaths two bars long.
CLOCK: her resting rate locks to it, a beat a clock, every breath starting on the bar; with nothing in it, her own 103 a minute, what her heart read before the launch.

The cabin

The capsule standing out of the panel is her cabin, with a heater in it, and the module reads the metal, never the knob. So the heat has weight: about a minute to climb, longer to fall. As it warms she pants and her heart runs at double time. Too hot and it stumbles, and the stumbles add up. Cool it in time and she comes back. Leave it, and her heart stops, and your patch with it.

HEAT: the heater: where the cabin's heading, not where it is. At zero she lives for ever; at noon she holds, just; past two o'clock, not for long.
HEAT (the jack): adds to the knob, 0 to 8 V.
Your finger: skin warms a cool capsule a little, and draws the heat out of a hot one faster than anything. Blowing cools it too.
TEMP: the capsule's temperature over the case's air: a hot summer rack doesn't harm her by itself.

The orbit

Once an orbit she comes over the ground station and the telemetry comes in: on RADIO her heart is a tone rising out of the static and going back. Between passes there's the static and the beacon. On the panel she's the bright light going round the dotted circle; the station's stretch is the faint arc at its foot.

ORBIT: how long she takes to go round: 1 to 64 bars, or 6 seconds to 6 minutes.
REACH: how much of each orbit the ground hears, from a sixteenth to all of it.
STATIC: how deep in the radio she is: fully left clean, fully right barely there.

Launch

LAUNCH: a roar on the radio, and her heart races to twice its rest in two bars and holds through the burn. Then she's weightless, and it takes sixteen bars to come down, landing on the grid. A new flight, from wherever the cabin's heat is.
LAUNCH (the jack): a gate does the same.
After: if her heart stops, the capsule goes on round, the beacon fading with its batteries, then falls and burns up. Then nothing, until a launch.

What comes out

RADIO: the static, the beacon, the launch, her heart in each pass.
CHEST: her heart, dry.
HEART: a trigger a beat.
BREATH: her breath as a CV.
TEMP: the capsule's temperature.
PASS: high while the ground can hear her.
BURN: fires when the capsule burns up coming down.

Inside

The capsule plugs through the panel into the board on five steel pins, so the panel comes off and turns round to the earth at night.

The LAIKA panel: a small dog in gold, front on in her harness, looking up at a small aluminium capsule with a dotted glow and a dotted circle round it.

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; the capsule 10 mm in front
+12 V: about 70 mA; 100 mA with the heater full on; 230 mA at most
−12 V: about 6 mA
+5 V: not used
Controls: 5 knobs, a lit button, a capsule

Inputs

CLOCK: a pulse a beat, rising past 1 V
LAUNCH: gate, rising past 1 V
HEAT: CV, 0 to 8 V, added to the knob

Outputs

RADIO, CHEST: audio, ±5 V
HEART: trigger, 5 V, 5 ms a beat
BURN: trigger, 5 V, 20 ms
PASS: gate, 5 V
BREATH: CV, 0 to 5 V
TEMP: CV, 0 V at the case's air, half a volt a degree

The capsule

The cup: turned aluminium, 17 mm across, a heater and two sensors inside, plugged through the panel into the board
The heater: 0.24 W full on: a minute to warm 8 degrees
Safety: kept under 45 °C and 14 degrees over the case; cut at 48 °C by a circuit of its own
The room: a sensor for the case's air

Engine

Brain: RP2350, 46,875 samples a second
Light: 32 white LEDs in the art's own dots
Power cycle: keeps only its calibration