Internet Time Clock

Introduction

Internet Time Clock is a mini desk clock that displays the universal standart time for the entire internet! It let's you plan online meetups or events without worrying about time zones. Instead of using hours and minutes it divides the day into 1000 ".beats"(each .beat spanning 86.4 seconds). It is written with an '@' symbol preceding the number, as in "let's meet @500" (read as "at 500"). The time format was originally introduced by Swatch in 1998 but never gained traction with the general public and became obsolete soon after.^[1]

While it didn't catch on in the 90s, Internet Time made a comeback on indie websites. (There's a great collection of implementations on GitHub). I've also implemented internet time on my guestbook a few years ago as people all around the world left comments and I wanted to use a a different time format to differentiate between standart time. So making a (mini) desk clock to accompany that was on my to-do list for a while!

The clock is powered by an ATmega328P microcontroller and features a built-in real-time clock (RTC) chip. Thanks to its onboard lithium battery it keeps track of internet time even when it isn't powered on to an accuracy of ±0.6 .beats per year.

Design Philosophy: Visible Circuitry

The connection between the main components can be visually traced.

Electronic circuits are usually treated as something to be hidden inside an enclosure, it's common to design devices as "black boxes" where the components of the device can only be seen if opened up. For this clock, I wanted to explore the opposite by creating a device that is the antithesis of a black box (which I lazily titled 'Visible Circuitry'), where the circuit is fully visible and where each connection can be visually traced. I already explored this idea a few years back as a freeform circuit with my astronomy clock project and I wanted to take it a step further by designing a printed circuit board with the same philosophy.

The freeform astronomical clock which displays the Local Sidereal Time(LST) and lunar phase.

With this goal in mind, I made the circuit itself an integral part of the clock's physical design, this has led me to rethink my design process as I had to select components not only based on efficiency and price (as I normally would) but for their aesthetic value as well. For the PCB I've used a transparent solder mask to make the copper traces stand out to allow the electrical connections to be followed by eye.

What is Internet Time?

a page from the Swatch Internet Time brochure

At the height of the dot-com boom, Swatch saw the opportunity to be one of the frontrunners in timekeeping on the internet. To solve the inconveniences of traditional time zones and standard time, they proposed a new system called "Internet Time" (also known as .beat time). Much like its radical precursor, French Revolutionary Time, Internet Time was a decimal time format. However, instead of dividing the day into 10 hours it divided the day (from midnight to midnight) into 1000 parts called ".beats" with each part spanning 86.4 seconds. The time was written with an "@" sign preceding the number (e.g., @389) and It had no time zones but a day in Internet Time began at midnight BMT (standard time) in Biel/Bienne, Switzerland, where Swatch's headquarters is located.^[2]

Swatch watch models with Internet Time.

The launch was made in collaboration with the founder of MIT Media Lab, Nicholas Negroponte. “Cyberspace has no seasons and no night and day,” Negroponte said during the announcement. "Internet Time is absolute time for everybody. Internet Time is not geopolitical. It is global. In the future, for many people, real time will be Internet Time."^[3]. The goal was to make international cyber communication easier. If a someone in Ankara wanted to chat online with someone in New York, they didn't have to calculate the time zone differences. They could simply agree to meet at "@500" and it would be the exact same time for both of them.

Internet Time in Phantasy Star Online (bottom right). Screenshot from reddit

To push for global adoption, Swatch produced several watch models and launched massive marketing campaigns, which included deals with companies like CNN to display Internet Time on their websites. It was adopted as the official clock of Nation1, an online country run by children.^[4] The system was also integrated into the multiplayer role-playing game Phantasy Star Online to give players across the globe a universal clock for coordinating gameplay.

They even went so far as to pay the Russian Space Agency, ROSCOSMOS, to launch a satellite titled "Beat-nik" (get it?) to transmit marketing messages from outer space. This ended up causing a huge controversy.^[5] Swatch was planning to use an amateur radio band for the satellite, which explicitly violated international treaties that forbid using amateur radio bands for commercial purposes.

Despite these massive promotional campaigns and investments, Swatch's Internet Time never truly caught on with the general public and failed to replace traditional standard time on the internet and became obsolete soon after.

Why make a clock for an obsolete time format?

I have a guestbook on my webpage where people from all over the internet can leave comments. For a while, I used UTC to keep track of when people left their messages. However, although UTC is technically universal, it is still based on the standard 24-hour time system we use in our daily lives, making it easy to mix up with my local time. So, I thought what better way to time stamp a digital guestbook than with a time format built specifically for the internet?

Hardware

Close-up of the HPDL-1414 bubble display

The hardware consists of an ATmega328P microcontroller, a DS3231 real-time clock (RTC), an HPDL-1414 bubble display, and a push button for input. I'm using USB-C to power the board as the display is quite power hungry and consumes about 150 mA when powered on.

The schematic of Internet time clock

The centerpiece of the clock is the Vintage HPDL 1414 Alphanumeric bubble display.^[6] I was on the hunt for a alphanumeric display for a long time as I wanted to display the @ sign which is hard to do with 7 segment displays. The HPDL-1414 is a perfect display for this use case as it was introduced in the 90s making it a fitting match for the project.

PCB

PCB finalized in KiCAD

I ordered the PCBs from OSH Park using their After Dark finish. This process uses a black-core substrate with SMOBC (Solder Mask Over Bare Copper), allowing the exposed copper traces to stand out against the black background.

Here's the result, the PCB's require a bit of sanding after manufacturing.

Firmware

Calculating Internet Time

Internet Time is based on BMT so first we have to calculate how many seconds have passed since midnight in BMT time which UTC+1.

long totalSeconds = (bmtHour * 3600L) + (now.minute() * 60L) + now.second();

Then we devide the total seconds by 86.4 to find get how many .beats has passed since midnight.

int beats = (totalSeconds * 10) / 864; 

The firmware is much simpler compared to a conventional clock because Internet Time doesn't require setting hours, minutes, or Daylight saving time. A single push button is all that's needed to configure the clock. Pressing and holding the button enters time-setting mode, causing the display to blink. While in this mode, each button press advances the time, and holding the button continuously speeds up the adjustment. After the button is released, the clock exits time-setting mode after a few seconds and saves the new time to the DS3231 Real Time Clock.