Swatch Internet Time / .beat Time

#beatTime#

How does it work?

It divides the day into 1000 “beats”. Instead of using hours, minutes, and seconds to represent time, Swatch Internet Time uses a single decimal number ranging from 000 to 999. Each beat is equivalent to 1 minute and 26.4 seconds. Sometimes you'll also see some extra numbers like “.56”, those are microbeats/centibeats and are similar to seconds.

Swatch time is usually preceded by an @ symbol; this helps you know it's swatch time and not some random number! For example @123 or @542.69

000 in Swatch time is the same as Midnight UTC+1; but because swatch time does not use timezones, midnight will be different for everyone. The goal of swatch time is not to provide the relative time you can use in your daily life; it's for worldwide events that all need to happen at the same time!

Useful Conversions

Below are some helpful conversions you can use to contextualise beat time and understand how to think about it!

Recommended reference beat times:

1.beat - AFK I'll be back in a moment!
5.beats - The time it takes to make a coffee
15.beats - a quick lunch break
30.beats - An average TV show episode without ads
100.beats - A long movie!
200.beats - The whole afternoon!
350.beats - The time you'd spend at a full-time job and/or a good night's sleep!

Beats to common time frames:

4.beats = 5 minutes
11.beats = 15 minutes
42.beats = 1 hour
126.beats = 3 hours
1000.beats = 24 hours

How can I use swatch time in my life?

Easy; just use swatch time when you are planning your events or meetups and get your friends to do the same! There are even some apps that can help you!

Swatch Time Apps for various platforms:

All Apple devices, including Apple Watch - BeatTime
Android Phones - Swatch .beat clock
Pebble Smart Watches - See Beat apps
macOS Menubar - dotbeat
GNOME Extension - Swatch Clock
Cinnamon Applet - Internet Time
Win 95/XP - iBeat

Code Snippets

You can also include a swatch clock on your website; here are some premade code snippets you can use!

JavaScript:

JavaScript - Easy Option

Here is a premade JavaScript clock for your website! Just paste this code onto your page wherever you want your clock to be and it will work!

<span id="swatchClock">@000</span>
<script defer src="https://melonking.net/scripts/swatchTime.js"></script>

JavaScript - Full Code

// Returns the current Swatch beat
function GetSwatchTime(showDecimals = true) {
    // get date in UTC/GMT
    var date = new Date();
    var hours = date.getUTCHours();
    var minutes = date.getUTCMinutes();
    var seconds = date.getUTCSeconds();
    var milliseconds = date.getUTCMilliseconds();
    // add hour to get time in Switzerland
    hours = hours == 23 ? 0 : hours + 1;
    // time in seconds
    var timeInMilliseconds = ((hours * 60 + minutes) * 60 + seconds) * 1000 + milliseconds;
    // there are 86.4 seconds in a beat
    var millisecondsInABeat = 86400;
    // calculate beats to two decimal places
    if (showDecimals) {
        return Math.abs(timeInMilliseconds / millisecondsInABeat).toFixed(2);
    } else {
        return Math.floor(Math.abs(timeInMilliseconds / millisecondsInABeat));
    }
}

If you want it to display on your webpage and auto-update here is an example - first, we make a span with an id, this is where the clock will appear on your page - then we get that span in a script, make a function that fills it with the swatch time, and finally, we set it to reload every microbeat.

<span id="mySwatchClock"></span>
<script>
    var mySwatchClock = document.getElementById('mySwatchClock');
    function updateSwatchClock() {
        mySwatchClock.innerHTML = '@' + GetSwatchTime();
    }
    setInterval(updateSwatchClock, 864);
</script>

PHP:

PHP has native support for Swatch time, you can get the latest beat using this snippet:

$swatchTime = date('B'); //000-999

However if you would like a full function that also shows microbeats, we have that too!

// Returns the current Swatch beat
function GetSwatchTime($showDecimals = true)
{
    // Get time in UTC+1 (Do not Change!)
    $now = new DateTime("now", new DateTimeZone("UTC"));
    $now->add(new DateInterval("PT1H"));
    // Calculate the seconds since midnight e.g. time of day in seconds
    $midnight = clone $now;
    $midnight->setTime(0, 0);
    $seconds = $now->getTimestamp() - $midnight->getTimestamp();
    // Swatch beats in seconds - DO NOT CHANGE
    $swatchBeatInSeconds = 86.4;
    // Calculate beats to two decimal places
    if ($showDecimals) {
        return number_format(round(abs($seconds / $swatchBeatInSeconds), 2), 2);
    } else {
        return floor(abs($seconds / $swatchBeatInSeconds));
    }
}

BASH:

(note that Etc timezones are inverted) Calculating Beat Time in bash is simple:

MIDNIGHT=$( TZ='Etc/GMT-1' date -d "12:00 am" +%s )
BTIME=$(( (($EPOCHSECONDS - $midnight) * 1000)  / 86400 ))
echo @$BTIME

However, you need to use an external program to calculate centibeats, since bash does not handle decimals well:

(using dc, which is a rpn calculator)

MIDNIGHT=$( TZ='Etc/GMT-1 date -d "12:00 am" +%s )

printf @
dc << EOF
# setting precision
2 k
# subtracting midnight from the current epoch
$EPOCHREALTIME $MIDNIGHT -
# converting to ms
1000 *
# divide by seconds in a day
86400 /
# print it to screen
p
EOF

To display it on your screen permanently, you can use any program that uses piped input, but lemonbar is the easiest to use:

while true
do
  MIDNIGHT=$( TZ='Etc/GMT-1' date -d "12:00 am" +%s )
  BTIME=$(( (($EPOCHSECONDS - $midnight) * 1000)  / 86400 ))
  echo @$BTIME
done | lemonbar -bg 48+0+18  # positions a little above the bottom left

(you can replace the code between the do and done with the dc version too)

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