watched pot

it never boils

20 HP

One big motorised dial, and a small eye that knows when you're facing it. While you look at it, it holds dead still and the sound hushes. Look away and the dial creeps round and your sound comes slowly to the boil. Look back and it's somewhere else, and you never saw it go.

The WATCHED POT panel: black, with seven old faces in gold dots round the edge, seen from inside a pot, looking down. In the middle a gold coil, with a big black dial at its centre. A small lens sits between the eyes of the face at the top. TAP L and TAP R in at the top left, LEFT and RIGHT out at the top right, WATER and LID under them, TEMP and OVER out either side of the coil, GAS and SALT under it, the EYES button at the foot with EYES in and WATCHED out either side of it. watched pot at the top, daylight noise at the bottom.

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. HEAT turns the same ways, heavily, under your hand. EYES is a button: press it and it thinks it's watched until you press it again. The patches step on by themselves until you touch something.

A dark band in A minor through it, and somebody standing at the rack. Listen plays the patch from its top.

Hold it. Or take your pointer off the panel, scroll away, or leave the tab: it goes on without you.

example patches

Everything WATCHED POT does here is its engine as designed, running in your browser. This page stands in for the eye: your pointer on the panel is you looking. No camera, none asked for. The module's eye reads a face and keeps nothing. The band is a stand-in rack.

The eye

A small camera in the panel looks for a face turned towards it. It's your head it reads, not your eyes: turn away and it's alone. A small light under the lens stays on while the camera's on, and brightens when it sees you. No pictures leave it, and it keeps none.

While it's seen the dial doesn't move, not by a hair, and the coil is black. It waits most of a second after you've gone, to be sure, so a glance every second holds it for ever. It can't see in the dark. Turn the lights out and nobody's looking.

EYES, a lit button: press it and it thinks it's watched until you press it again, wherever you are. It's the only way to leave a build where it is.
EYES, a gate: patch it and the rack does the looking and the camera's off. High is watched. It's the one way you'll see the dial move, in a room with nobody in it, in the dark, on the bar.
More faces, colder: any one face holds it, and the more it's seen lately the longer it waits and the lower its flame.

The pot

HEAT is where the dial is and nothing else: cold it's clean; warm, the first tiny pops, grains of your own sound; at a simmer it moves and rolls and the low end thickens; at a rolling boil it feeds back on itself, big bubbles in the key of what's playing, and a whine climbing towards the top.

HEAT, the dial: drag it and it drags back. Pull it down off the heat, and the moment you look away it starts up again. Push it past the boil and it goes over.
GAS: how fast it climbs while nobody's looking, a full turn in an hour fully left, twelve seconds fully right. A low flame loses heat as fast as it gains it, and settles.
LID: looking at it puts the lid on. The sound's dulled at once, the flame goes on, and what it would have climbed is stored. Look away and it goes into the dial all at once. Past noon you'll hear it ticking as you stare. Full, a stare stops nothing: it only saves it up.
WATER: what's boiling. Fully left a hot pan, tiny bubbles, high and spitting, the dry sound under them. Full, big slow glugs, and the sound's all gone to them.
SALT: how hot it must get before it boils over. Fully left, not very. Full, never: it sits at the top and seethes.

Boiling over

At the boil it goes over. BOILED fires, the flood comes out, the lid rattles on your own hits, and the motor spins the dial back to cold while a long hiss runs out. Look at it in the middle of boiling over and it stays over, the dial at the top and the flood on, for as long as you stare. You can stop a build by looking at it. You can only stop a boil-over by looking away.

What goes in

TAP L, R: audio. Unpatched, TAP R takes TAP L.
GAS: a CV added to the knob. Below nothing the flame's out and it cools, unseen.
EYES: a gate, as above.

What comes out

LEFT, RIGHT: the pot.
OVER: the flood. Unpatched it goes to LEFT and RIGHT. Patched, it leaves here alone.
TEMP: the dial as a voltage, 0 to 8 V. Whatever's moved it.
WATCHED: a gate, high while it's seen. Your attention, as a gate.
BOILED: a trigger as it goes over.

Inside

One board 10 mm behind the panel, everything on its front. Under the coil, 64 LEDs, two red and two white a cell, shine through a black printed baffle. The printed dial sits on a gimbal motor that sinks through a hole in the board into a printed cup, a magnet on its shaft over an angle sensor. The camera sits in a printed block on the board.

The WATCHED POT panel: a gold woodcut of faces round a coil of copper rings glowing orange, one big black dial with a gold line in its middle, a small eye at the top, four knobs, ten jacks and the EYES button.

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, 20.2 at the motor’s cup; the dial 14.6 mm in front
+12 V: about 75 mA starting, 150 to 180 in use, 390 at most for 2.4 s boiling over (on paper, not yet measured)
−12 V: about 8 mA, 12 at the most (on paper)
+5 V: not used
Board: 99.3 × 110 mm, 4 layers, parts on the front; a Ø16 sensor board
Controls: a motorised dial, 4 knobs, a lit button, a small camera

I/O

TAP L, R: audio in, ±5 V, unclipped to ±9 V
GAS: CV, ±5 V for half the knob’s travel
EYES: gate, high past 1 V, low under 0.5 V
LEFT, RIGHT: audio out, ±5 V, a soft ceiling at 4.3 V
OVER: audio out, the same
TEMP: CV, 0 to 8 V: the dial
WATCHED: gate, 0/5 V
BOILED: trigger, 0/5 V, 10 ms

Engine

Brain: RP2350, two cores, 32-bit float, 46.875 kHz
The eye: a 160 × 120 grey camera behind a Ø8.6 mm hole, a frontal face finder, 8 to 25 looks a second; a face 0.3 to 0.8 m away (estimated)
The dial: a gimbal motor and a 14-bit magnetic angle sensor, 270°, its stops hard
Light: a coil of 16 cells, 32 red and 32 white LEDs, and a light under the lens
Power cycle: the heat is where the dial was left; nothing else is kept