[HN Gopher] Someone should probably start a bright home lighting...
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Someone should probably start a bright home lighting company (2019)
Author : luu
Score : 423 points
Date : 2022-02-28 05:53 UTC (17 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.lincolnquirk.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.lincolnquirk.com)
| liminalsunset wrote:
| Interesting to see someone else working on the problem of bright
| indoor lighting. I've been searching for a good solution to the
| "indoor light not bright enough" problem for some time, and
| here's some stuff I've tried:
|
| -IKEA NOT ($10 floor lamp) lights with a bunch of light bulb
| splitters and at least two giant high-CRI twister CFL bulbs for
| photo studios from Amazon. These are truly massive and look like
| a normal CFL light bulb, but are about a foot long. Two of them
| consume 130W at the wall, and put out a rather large amount of
| light. Managed to get about 1000 lux at the desk this way.
| Unfortunately you can only get them in 5000K and 6500K. The
| daylight color may bother some people at night. Furthermore, they
| are undimmable.
|
| -Track lighting with six IKEA TRADFRI tunable white bulbs on it,
| in an L shape following my desk. IKEA bulbs supposedly reach 90
| CRI, and these can be color tuned (arbitrarily if you use the hub
| and the HomeKit app, not just 3 levels) and dimmed. At 1000lm,
| they are the brightest tunable white bulbs on the market commonly
| imo (most are 800). The range of color tuning is rather low,
| 2700-4000K. This is because the bulb never turns off the warm
| channel I think. Furthermore, at 4000K, the light is slightly
| greenish.
|
| Some notes:
|
| -I definitely find dimmable and/or color tunable bulbs to be
| useful, because at night, extremely bright or white light isn't
| extremely helpful for sleep.
|
| -I found that high room brightness might make it difficult to see
| a computer screen that isn't turned up all the way.
|
| -I found that if the lights were mounted overhead-ish, and were
| really individually bright, they would cause annoying glare under
| some circumstances
|
| Some more hardware developmenty stuff I looked into:
|
| -LED strips. High CRI tunable white LED strips are available on
| AliExpress, along with the LED channels to run them. Actually
| getting a constant current supply and appropriate power rigged up
| is an exercise left for the reader. Unfortunately, LED strips use
| resistors for constant current, so waste a little bit of power
| there.
|
| -Building a custom LED plate for the Tradfri lights that used
| Lumileds chips capable of 95 CRI. I built and tested one, and
| still have the files if someone should want to try. It doesn't
| expand the tuning range much at all.
|
| -Designing my own LED bulbs. This is a project in progress. I
| found some LED chips on DigiKey from Bridgelux (V6 Thrive array)
| and some giant BR40 bulbs at a local store for 3 bucks each that
| still have a massive heat sink on them to modify. The heat sink
| gets up to 60C with 18W input to the LEDs at 25C ambient. The LED
| chips are capable of outputting 98 CRI and come much closer to
| approximating sunlight than anything else I've found by
| wavelength/spectrum.
|
| Hopefully someone finds something here useful.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| This is pitched as (1) a treatment for SAD and (2) something
| people would like.
|
| And that's great, but I want to consider something else -- one of
| the best theories of civilization-caused myopia is that it's
| caused by insufficient exposure to sunlight. And the table in the
| post is certainly circumstantial evidence supporting that theory:
|
| > Direct sunlight shines 100k lux
|
| > Full daylight (indirect) is more than 10k lux
|
| > Indoor office lighting is typically 500
|
| That's a big difference. What if illuminating the indoors at
| 10,000 lux prevented people from developing myopia?
| svarrall wrote:
| There seems to have been a fair amount of research into this
| based on the COVID lockdowns around the world. One such study:
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33443542/
| sooheon wrote:
| You may be interested in the following video, where a quadruple
| board certified doc reviews relevant literature regarding sun
| exposure (and the critical wavelengths involved) and various
| facets of health: https://youtu.be/5YV_iKnzDRg
|
| The review paper that ties many different findings from
| different fields (optics, endocrinology, circadian rhythms...)
| together with an audacious spoonful of hypothesizing is this:
| http://melatonin-research.net/index.php/MR/article/view/19/2...
| gwbas1c wrote:
| Bright lights give me a headache, especially in midday when it's
| bright outside. I'll often resort to wearing sunglasses indoors
| when it gets out of hand.
|
| Perhaps it's a certain kind of light, but I don't get the same
| kind of headache outside in bright lights. (Although I do find
| bright days painful.)
| hedora wrote:
| We just put in lighting for an entire house. Here's what we
| learned:
|
| - Even high-end bulbs flicker badly when dimmed. Maybe flickering
| all the LEDs in the array with different phases would fix this.
|
| - It's illegal to sell bulbs that buzz in California. All our
| custom fixtures buzz. If you buy high end dimmers, they buzz
| less, but still buzz. More enforcement of consumer protection
| laws is needed. Manufacturers should be liable for parts and
| labor and upgrades if their fixture buzzes with a dimmer that's
| licensed for sale in the state. Dimmers should be regulated for
| compatibility with a least-common-denominator LED.
|
| - The current status quo is to buy lights that are brighter than
| needed, then dim them (California mandates installation of
| dimmers). This makes no sense. There should be an option to do a
| lighting simulation of the house, and then use the results of
| that to remove the dimmer requirements for high-efficiency,
| properly-sized installs. This helps solve the flickering and
| buzzing issue.
|
| - The bulbs are all high CRI and matched color temp. They mostly
| maintain CRI and temp across the dimmable range, but other bulbs
| I've dealt with in the past did not. Bulb CRI should be rated at
| the worst-case dimming level.
|
| - There should be a maximum permittible latency for power on of
| bulbs, again, across the dimming range. Some of our lights take 2
| seconds to power on. (Coincidentally, these are probably the most
| marked up of the fixtures, and the only ones bought from a non-
| Ikea brick and mortar that operates in California. (These are
| also the loudest of the buzzers).
|
| - Lutron fixtures are terrible. The smarter the fixture, the
| worse it is. Many are not fit for purpose. Everyone we've talked
| to say they're the best available. They should be liable for
| replacement parts and labor, and more consumer protection laws
| are needed (around minimum time to power on, correctness of
| movement / humidity detction, and standardization of the dimming
| current range, and the user interface of what happens if you push
| buttons / flip switches. The latter is not standard, even within
| Lutron's line)
| rsyring wrote:
| FWIW, I just replaced a lot of bulbs in my house with Philips
| Hue white ambience bulbs because I'm very sensitive to
| flickering and we dim a lot. So far, no buzz or flicker. They
| are expensive, and so is everything in their ecosystem, but I
| finally have a light I like dimming.
| hedora wrote:
| Ahh. We're talking about different market segments.
|
| The highest performing bulbs we have are also the cheapest.
| We went with hyperikon bulbs, IKEA pendant fixtures and mid
| to low end lutron dimmers in some rooms.
|
| Those are totally fine. In hindsight, I'd probably have gone
| with 100% IKEA pendant fixtures that use standard bulbs and
| populate them with hyperikon bulbs. Sadly, hyperikon
| apparently went out of business. Thanks, Covid! Surely some
| other company makes decent dumb bulbs these days. No idea
| who, though.
|
| The problems start once you buy modern fixtures, where the
| LEDs and power converters are integrated into the fixture
| itself.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| My experience with the Philips Hue was: not bright enough.
| That was admittedly years ago when they were the new hotness.
| Perhaps they are brighter now.
|
| Also, I don't want "an app for that" with my lighting.
| davidgay wrote:
| They recently announced new, brighter lights.
|
| Re the app: then don't use it, just program the hub
| directly yourself - see https://developers.meethue.com/.
|
| It all runs locally on the hub - I've set it up for auto-
| day/night colour switching, plus manual override via a
| switch. I also used a light meter to more precisely tune
| the colour temperature ;)
| avs733 wrote:
| this is actually immensely helpful as someone in the middle of
| a renovation.
|
| We're planning on having a combination of 'direct' light from
| bulbs and cans as well as dimmable (and tunable color temp) LED
| strip lighting that throws indirectly into the ceiling. The
| frustration with residential dimmers (really all residential
| versions of things) is so true.
|
| Before we moved out for demolition we did some mockup testing
| and were just blown away by the effect of adding light to
| spaces. The house already has a ton of windows but the mockups
| had what would be considered and 'unreasonably high' amount of
| light by most design standards. That being said, we were so
| happy with the results, especially in the morning and early
| afternoon.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| > Even high-end bulbs flicker badly when dimmed.
|
| Dimming is crap. I'll go so far as to say it causes
| subconscious anxiety and stress -- obviously negating any
| positive effect the light brings.
|
| I rotate my hands quickly between my eyes and the lights when
| I'm at a store to look for strobing when dimmed. Any strobing
| and I am not on board.
|
| > Maybe flickering all the LEDs in the array with different
| phases would fix this.
|
| I doubt it. A truly "smart" light would, IMHO, cluster LED's in
| parallel banks and when asked to dim, disable whole banks.
|
| The cost then is in the controller within the bulb but I expect
| this would be cheap enough.
|
| Then of course dimming happens in "steps" but I would take that
| trade-off for non-flicker.
| _greim_ wrote:
| > Dimming is crap.
|
| Agreed LED dimming is crap, but incandescent is not so bad.
| Mainly because it dims toward red, simulating the day ->
| sunset -> fire transition. Apart from flickering, my gripe
| with LED is that it stays a constant color which looks
| unnatural even with a 2700K bulb.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| That's interesting: trying to track the color temperature
| curve as the bulb dims.
| rendall wrote:
| The fellow from the YouTube channel DIY Perks has several
| projects dealing with this, including an amazing parallel-ray
| "sun", and other projects recycling old TV and laptop screens
| into fake windows.
|
| https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOJU8YJjFwGN0hMRewz2_u2Ie...
| svilen_dobrev wrote:
| i still use 2 x 250W (5000lm) halogen sticks in a 6x3m room, for
| ~15 years. it's not enough and not flat, i know. (still much
| better than any stupid chandeler, like 2000lm).
|
| i have tried and tried several CRI90 and CRI95 LED lights, bulbs
| and strips, but the spectre is not same. Like Fruits look
| different. Ah, May try some panels too. Of course, none of the
| price-of-secondhad-car ones.
| mjd wrote:
| I light my office with two LED corn bulbs that collectively
| deliver 24,000 lm (equivalent to 15 or 16 100W incandescent
| bulbs) but consume only 200W and cost $140. They were super-easy
| to install because they just went into the standard sockets I
| already had.
|
| I've just published a blog post about this:
| https://blog.plover.com/tech/corn-bulbs.html
| zsellera wrote:
| If you ever wondered what makes LED lights feel great: it's the
| strategic mixing of LEDs with different characteristics.
|
| Here's a free tool that helps designing such fixtures:
| https://www.meerkatblog.com/ledmixing
| Tepix wrote:
| I'm confused - most LED will not make you feel great (unlike
| incandescent light) - on the contrary, you have to put in a lot
| of effort to get decent light from LEDs.
| zsellera wrote:
| There is a little to no consumer market for quality stuff
| (ppl buy based on price, maybe lm/W, maybe CRI95+).
|
| You'll see great LED installations at:
|
| - offices & commercial buildings, where it was designed by an
| engineer
|
| - medical, where identifying things like skin-tone is
| critical
|
| - transportation (often street lights), where it's optimised
| for night-time contrast
| FeepingCreature wrote:
| I think the implied meaning was "how to make LED lighting
| feel great".
| p1mrx wrote:
| "Natural light" is one of the motivating reasons for open-plan
| offices, so practical artificial windows could help reverse that
| trend.
| dan-robertson wrote:
| I struggle to believe that this is the case. Many offices are
| massive single rooms in buildings with large floor plates and
| often meeting rooms may end up placed around the edge. So in
| practice I think big open offices (and the desire to have
| everyone close in one room) tend to lead towards not getting
| much natural light, but of course if you put smaller offices or
| cubicles in that space they'd get even less light.
| netcan wrote:
| Quite tangential, but I always giggle at this version of time-is-
| money " _I have already put 6+ hours into researching this idea;
| I would probably pay at least $400 to get that time back._ "
|
| I understand the reasoning behind adopting such frames, but for
| me, this way of thinking wouldn't work at all. At best, it'd be
| my new procrastination shiney. I find a lot of benefit, and also
| quite enjoy, quantifying like this at a bigger scale, but micro-
| rationalising such as this totally doesn't suit my brain. I
| wonder if it's me or him in the minority?
|
| The " _therefore_ " following from the time-is-money logic (he
| would pay > $1000 for this product) seems like a pretty alien
| disconnect for me. My back of envelope would probably be " _most
| people pay between $x-$y for lighting and /or other decor stuff,
| therefore..._" s
|
| I don't disagree on his conclusion (maybe $400-$1200 price
| point), which makes me wonder if either of us are really arriving
| at our conclusions in the way we think we are, or just retconning
| our reasoning using random ideas floating around our minds
| uselessly.
|
| In any case, I think the overall idea is good and the timing is
| good. For a start, it's a fairly DIY-ish on the interior design
| front thing regardless of available products because you can't
| use 20000 lumen lights the way you would a 200 lumen light.
| callesgg wrote:
| I tried doing something like this last year, I purchased lots of
| 1000 lumen LED bulbs.
|
| The light was blindingly bright to look at and it looks very
| strange in a room.
|
| My takeaway was:
|
| * that you need some type of diffuser.
|
| * The light leak out of the apartment was crazy. My apartment
| looked completely insane from the street.
|
| * The light warmth is very important. And proper sun coloured
| lamps don't exist or are crazy expensive.
| blagie wrote:
| I found that:
|
| 1) Most modern LEDs are surprisingly good for being sun-
| colored. It's luck-of-the-draw, though. I once bought some very
| expensive CFL bulbs from B&H, rated as 90+CRI, and they were
| literally tritone. I bought some bottom-of-the-barrel LED bulbs
| at Walmart, and they were great (until they started failing a
| few months later).
|
| 2) You can test this yourself with a $1 pair of diffraction
| glasses. They're sold as "3d" or "rainbow" or similar kids toys
| at dollar stores, or with a shipping markup Fleabay.
|
| 3) Diffuser is important, but it's also possible to just
| install many bulbs all around.
|
| 4) Consistency is important. If your hallway feels dimmer or
| brighter than your room, it's not great.
|
| 5) Changing color temperature is nice.
|
| I don't think there's a business model here, though. This stuff
| isn't expensive, but most of the cost is educating the
| customer. Once a customer is educated, they can do the same
| thing themselves without your help (even with cheap Walmart
| lights).
| lazide wrote:
| The market is flooded with fakes and shittily QA'd products
| (often under previously good brand names) - having a turnkey
| solution with guaranteed quality would have a lot of buyers,
| and there is a lot of potential to grow a new solid brand.
|
| If you do, please don't sell to private equity right away.
| Let us all get a couple years of a real solid product at
| least.
|
| I'm still pissed at the (well known brand) USB stick I bought
| (marked high speed!) due to shitty engineering would overheat
| on any transfer longer than about 10 seconds, then throttle
| to KB/s read/write speed. Average speed was 1.5MB/s.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| > You can test this yourself with a $1 pair of diffraction
| glasses.
|
| I'm reading between the lines here: I think you want to see
| as continuous a spectrum as is possible with LEDs, not three
| discrete bands (R, G, B)?
|
| I know LED are not spectrally continuous like incandescent
| (black body) radiation. Maybe the phosphor coating excites in
| a more continuous spectrum?
|
| > I don't think there's a business model here, though.
|
| I disagree. I would pay a premium if a company could offer a
| line that hit the mark on all points: temperature,
| brightness, spectrum, non-flickering.
|
| My alternatives today appear to be a kind of roulette. And a
| lot of money is wasted at roulette....
| blagie wrote:
| Correct. You can see a continuous spectrum on some bulbs,
| and bulbs split into three (R, G, and B) for others. It's
| very obvious. You can't tell a CRI of 80 from 85, but in my
| experience, it doesn't matter very much.
|
| You're correct that the alternatives now are a kind of
| roulette. A new company would add one more bullet (or empty
| chamber) into the barrel. There is no way for a customer to
| know "Company X solves this problem correctly." If you run
| LightBulbX and do everything right, and I run
| LumiNosiTechNo and have the same marketing pages as you,
| people won't know better.
|
| If reputation builds up somehow, LightBulbX is just as
| liable to get bought up by an investor who milks that
| reputation by selling $2 products for $1000.
|
| A value proposition isn't the same as a viable business
| model. I think there's a clear value proposition which many
| people would in abstract pay for in an abstract world of
| perfect transparency and information, but we're not in that
| world. I don't think there's a viable business model.
| branko_d wrote:
| I used "rails lights" (the kind they often use in boutiques)
| and pointed them up at the ceiling (rails are mounted on walls,
| not the ceiling). There is almost nowhere in the apartment
| where you can look directly at a light source. The result:
| bright but pleasantly diffused light.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Very cool. I had considered something like this: install
| "crown moulding" a few inches shy of the ceiling and running
| rope lighting along where it will not be seen -- but can
| scatter across the ceiling.
| samstave wrote:
| This is a super common design technique - you can buy LED
| ready moulding:
|
| https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=crown+moulding+led&ia=web
| semi-extrinsic wrote:
| You should try with a short arc xenon bulb like the Osram XBO
| series. They are among other things used architecturally for
| emulating daylight inside buildings.
|
| Downside is you need a 70A 28V power supply and a semi-massive
| cooling system. And bulb lifetime is approx. 1 year of normal
| use.
| nine_k wrote:
| "Warmth" and "naturalness" are produced by high CRI index
| (90+).
|
| I have 8 lamps with CRI 90+ in my living room, at 5000K color
| temperature, 1500 lumens each. They produce nice light that
| seamlessly mixes with daytime sunlight from the window: they
| seem to have the same color.
|
| I also have a few LED strip installation over desks and tables,
| very bright at max dimmer setting. A diffuser is a must, even
| though it lowers the brightness noticeably. Without it,
| anything moderately shiny will reflect painfully bright dots of
| light.
| rattray wrote:
| Can you share a link / the name of the product?
| MengerSponge wrote:
| I'm a big fan of Seoul Semiconductor's SunLike LEDs.
|
| http://www.seoulsemicon.com/en/technology/sunlike/casestudy
| /
| rattray wrote:
| Thanks! Looks like they make the GE Sunfilled bulb, which
| is available for $2.57/bulb right now at Lowe's:
| https://www.lowes.com/pd/GE-GE-
| SUNFILLED-60W-A21-5000K-1CT/1...
|
| They claim to have a CRI of 97. They're dimmable and
| claim to be circadian-rhythm-friendly by not having a
| "blue spike", but don't claim to dim to a warmer tone.
|
| Bought 21 of them for use with the 7-bulb splitter that
| Ben Kuhn now recommends, linked elsewhere in this thread:
| https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01FKIE6M4/ref=as_li_ss
| _tl...
| formerly_proven wrote:
| Quick guide to CRI
|
| <90: Crap
|
| 90-95: Can be ok, or not. Depends. Different lights will
| likely not mix at the same color temperature.
|
| 98: Good
|
| 99-100 full spectrum cyberlight: As good as Halogen and only
| ~30x as expensive.
| thaeli wrote:
| R9 is also important in the higher CRI ranges. CRI is based
| on pastels - it's an artifact of measuring traditional
| florescent bob performance - and R9 captures the vivid reds
| that are important to truly accurate color rendition.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| Just from the scale I think it's clear that CRI is not
| that good a measure. As you say, CRI uses rendition of a
| dozen or so colors as a measure. The scale is heavily
| compressed - orange sodium vapor streetlights which are
| almost monochromatic "achieve" a CRI of 30, which is
| nowhere near "colors are 30 % good". Similarly, mercury
| vapor lamps have a CRI of around 50, and yet are complete
| garbage. All cheap LED fixtures are CRI 80 or 85 which is
| also garbage. 95 and 98 sounds very close, but aren't.
|
| SSI - spectrum similarity index - is probably a better
| measure, because it doesn't look at a few colors, but at
| the entire spectrum, and so heavily punishes peaky and
| discontinuous spectra as produced by many LEDs. High SSI
| values also result in much better mix-and-match behavior
| of light sources. Even CRI 95 LEDs often don't mix well,
| usually on the pink-barf-scale (tint).
| MengerSponge wrote:
| Funny quip I heard a few days ago from a guy designing LED
| systems for parking garages: "in a public lot your CRI only
| needs to be good enough to see the difference between blood
| and motor oil"
| leobg wrote:
| DIY Perks [1] has a good tutorial on how to make a super bright
| LED panel from LED strips. Quite easily, actually.
|
| Been using one of those in my office for the last eight years or
| so. I use a server PSU for power.
|
| I was surprised to see how bright it is when I once went outside
| while it was on. Not only was my window the brightest in the
| entire street by far. But it actually illuminated the trees
| around my window.
|
| If I was to build it again - and especially for a place like
| living room - , I would build it so as to also simulate sunset.
| That is to say, that it will automatically lower the brightness
| and shift to a warmer spectrum in the evening. Otherwise, this
| thing messes with your biorhythm and gets you out of sync with
| normal daylight hours very quickly.
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/jLia59KfkSw
| underwater wrote:
| He also created a version that simulates sunlight:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bqBsHSwPgw
| BizarroLand wrote:
| You should also take into account the costs associated with
| running and powering the COB led he used for that sun light.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBV-1VNWscA
| unfocussed_mike wrote:
| Yep -- I love this video. The detail he went into on this is
| remarkable; it taught me a few things about the limits of
| pretend sunlight as a photographer, and why some pretences
| work and others don't.
| joshspankit wrote:
| Came here to mention both DIY Perks videos, as well as to say
| that the ability to change colour temp is practically vital.
| 14 wrote:
| I was going to suggest diy perks but thought you were going to
| link his artificial sun video [1]. I've been wanting to build
| one but not sure where I could fit since it requires a bit more
| space then a bright led build would.
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6bqBsHSwPgw
| leobg wrote:
| Jesus Christ. I hadn't actually seen this one. Wow!
|
| You could say he's going overboard in this one, with that
| fish tank sky simulator thing. But then: How much do we spend
| on airfare and lodging just to wake up to this kind of light?
| What an amazing improvement in quality of life this can be.
|
| Thanks for sharing this one!
| 14 wrote:
| I really think it could boost a persons mood on a dark day
| his looks so incredible I would love to try it and even
| just brighten up one room. But I think if a guy were to
| make these as fake skylights you would really have a
| business.
| namibj wrote:
| Yuji does indeed make the good stuff, just really in a
| consumer-friendly form factor unless you count the low-power
| bulbs.
|
| For your sunset approximation, you could add some warmer ones
| and fade over; they also have some dual-color strips with two
| different color temperatures evenly spread to allow for
| seamless mixing.
| leobg wrote:
| Exactly. You'd probably need fewer of the warm colored
| strips, because at the time of day when you will want to use
| them you'll also want less light anyway.
| namibj wrote:
| While true, the ability to work in a warm white atmosphere
| is a benefit not to be ignored.
|
| (I'm using a 20W/m 5m strip of BC-series 1900K for my
| living room, along with a 10W 4000K bulb hanging from the
| ceiling.)
| manmal wrote:
| Since you seem to be a heavy user, and if you don't mind me
| asking: Has your eye sight deteriorated in those eight years,
| and how is your sleep quality?
| leobg wrote:
| No problems with eyesight. No glasses or anything. I see the
| light as basically replacing the brightness I would be
| getting if I wasn't sitting inside my office instead of
| outdoors.
|
| And sleep: I don't have any trouble sleeping, no. But as I
| mentioned, using a such a bright light in the evening will
| fuck with your day/night rhythm. If I'm not diligent to turn
| off those lights at sunset, I'll easily be working up until
| two or three in the morning. If that happens, the problem
| isn't that I wouldn't be able to sleep (I will) or that I
| would sleep badly (I won't). It's just that it shifts my
| rhythm out of sync with everybody else.
| manmal wrote:
| Thank you!
| sitkack wrote:
| One doesn't need to make lights out of led strips, shop lights
| have transitioned to LED.
|
| $20 each, https://www.harborfreight.com/5000-lumen-4-ft-led-
| hanging-sh... 5k lumens, 60w
|
| I also came to post the DIY perks video about simulated
| sunlight, the effect of parallel rays really changes the
| geometric mood of the room.
| lazide wrote:
| It really does help.
|
| Just don't keep working into the night under them, because
| whoa boy - talk about sleep disruption. Those nice bright
| lights make it surprisingly easy to work until 6am and not
| even realize it.
| necovek wrote:
| Since the OP is quite courageous about claiming someone
| "inventing" this in 2017, I'd like to highlight your prior art:
|
| > Been using one of those in my office for the last eight years
| or so. I use a server PSU for power.
|
| And as you mention, articles on it have been circulating for
| even longer.
| gjm11 wrote:
| Yudkowsky says he and his wife did it in 2014, so it sounds
| as if it was actually pretty much at the same time as said
| prior art.
|
| (Also, they were specifically doing it _as a treatment for
| SAD_ ; I don't think Yudkowsky claims novelty for anything
| other than the idea that SAD might be effectively treated by
| having very bright indoor lighting all the time rather than
| e.g. a lightbox that you sit next to for half an hour a day.)
| raegis wrote:
| The Paris hotel in Las Vegas has had this for at least 20
| years. When you're inside at 3am it feels like daytime. I
| think the idea is to keep you awake and gambling at all
| times.
| [deleted]
| Retric wrote:
| Light as a treatment for SAD has been looked at since 1984,
| all day exposure is hardly a new idea.
|
| https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/article-
| abst...
| kragen wrote:
| Right, but for some reason the SAD light boxes you could
| get produced much less light, so they weren't effective
| for her.
| jerf wrote:
| In 1984, to get the amount of light put out by ~250-300
| watts of LEDs in 2022 would have required the
| incandescent light array to come perilously close to the
| limit of what it is safe to pull from a single outlet
| continuously in the US, which is 1500 watts. (You can
| transiently pull 1800 from a standard wall outlet, which
| is used by hair dryers, but you're not supposed to pull
| it continuously for hours at a time.) It also would have
| functioned as a full-on space heater (that was on
| continuously, not on a thermostat as needed), and very
| careful attention would need to be paid to cooling this
| massive array.
|
| So, I'm gonna read between some lines here, but: I
| imagine earlier efforts would then by necessity have
| produced less light, because it's actually a lot easier
| to deal with ~400-500 watts of incandescent light than
| 1500 watts of incandescent light. 400-500 I think you
| could just about get away with putting a diffusion screen
| in front of them and making sure the enclosure has a lot
| of passive air flow. At 1500, if you're going to enclose
| this into a reasonably-sized product you're going to need
| active cooling with fans.
|
| And there is a little noticed and rarely talked about
| weakness I've seen in several science fields where I've
| dug into a history of papers, which is that once one
| investigator picks the parameters of an investigation, it
| tends to "stick". If the first scientist investigating
| "Light therapy for SAD" and picked a 500 watt
| incandescent setup, it is _extremely_ likely that many
| further papers will try to match their lumens setup, in
| the interests of trying to keep the papers informing each
| other. The entire therapy may live and die on the
| contingent conditions the first couple of researchers
| happened to pick, even after the entire lighting
| landscape has changed and it 's practical to blast 5
| times the light per watt and have time-varying light
| temperature now, which would have been even more
| difficult in 1984. (Conceivable, with some sort of
| rotating filter screen in front of it, but now you're
| cutting in to your light output even more, unlike modern
| LEDs which give you more options in dealing with this.)
| kragen wrote:
| By the 01980s you could have easily been using
| fluorescents, which went mainstream a quarter century
| earlier, so I think your stickiness hypothesis is the
| more likely problem. This had been puzzling me! Thank you
| for providing the likely solution!
| uxp100 wrote:
| Maybe fluorescents with the idea that the narrow spectrum
| of light produced was less likely to be effective?
| kragen wrote:
| Well, I mean, SAD lightboxes _do_ use fluorescents.
| Retric wrote:
| I spoke to a physiatrist who considered full spectrum
| light to be essential in the light boxes. Don't know
| about the actual research on the topic.
| ghostly_s wrote:
| The entire market of SAD lights was fluorescents pre-
| LEDs, they can be made just as "full spectrum" as LEDs
| are (by which I mean neither is capable of true full
| spectrum, just an approximation with appropriate
| phosphors).
| Retric wrote:
| Incandescents can actually produce a continuous spectrum,
| so I am guess this is and was just misuse of the term.
| kragen wrote:
| Yeah, I assumed you were saying that the physiatrist was
| insisting on the use of incandescents for that reason. I
| don't know why someone would interpret you as saying that
| LEDs were superior to fluorescents, since obviously
| neither one produces full-spectrum light!
| Udo wrote:
| It's Yudkowsky from LessWrong, he is actually a quite
| insightful thinker, but his disciples claim stuff like this
| _all the time_. LessWrong is an _extreme_ echo chamber.
|
| For me the breaking point was Roko's Basilisk, a self-
| proclaimed "most-dangerous idea of our time".
| thewakalix wrote:
| Are you honestly claiming that the author believes that
| Yudkowsky was literally the first person in history to
| suggest making lights brighter?
|
| Also, you should read anything Yudkowsky himself has
| written about Roko's basilisk. He's never claimed that it
| could work, or that it's dangerous at all.
|
| ("Why did he ban it then?" Because he wanted to prevent it
| from inspiring an infohazard brainstorming session that
| could produce a real danger, and he apparently hadn't heard
| about the Streisand effect.)
| Jiro wrote:
| Yudkowsky claimed that the exact basilisk as described by
| Roko wouldn't work, but he also believes that something
| like it would.
| thewakalix wrote:
| Sort of. He believes that if people try to come up with
| infohazards and then immediately spread them, there's a
| nonzero chance that they succeed. It's unlikely, but
| still not something to encourage.
|
| (This is not the same thing as "being certain that a
| minor modification of Roko's basilisk would produce an
| evil time-travelling AI," to be clear.)
| user-the-name wrote:
| This kind of utter gibberish is exactly why people don't
| take LessWrong seriously.
| thewakalix wrote:
| "Ideas can be harmful" is gibberish?
| Udo wrote:
| The amount of self-importance on display is what makes it
| sound like gibberish. A: "I have the most
| ground-breaking idea ever!" B: "Okay, let's hear
| it?" A: "No, it's too dangerous, it may well
| destroy the world, but trust me it's brilliant
| and completely novel."
|
| It's a religion at that point.
| [deleted]
| traverseda wrote:
| How about bitcoin? It's not so much an idea as a piece of
| software, but being predicted on wasting energy it's
| going to do a lot of harm. That's an example of this
| class of game-theory based ideas.
|
| I believe that there are other ideas like that, things
| that set up spirals that are a lot worse than just
| "destroy energy to make money". Obviously they're not
| going to be universally compelling, an idea that's
| dangerous like that in one context might be perfectly
| safe in another. It depends on the target audience.
| CryptoPunk wrote:
| >>It's not so much an idea as a piece of software, but
| being predicted on wasting energy it's going to do a lot
| of harm. That's an example of this class of game-theory
| based ideas.
|
| It's not a waste if the product the PoW generates is
| valued as equal to or greater than the cost of generating
| the PoW, and the market ensures that is the case, as
| miners cannot operating at a loss.
|
| Where it can be socially harmful is when energy consumers
| don't pay for the cost of the negative externalities that
| the energy they purchase created in its generation, but
| that applies to all energy usage, not just that used in
| generating PoW.
|
| You should know that costly signalling strategies are
| widely employed in nature because costly signals are
| reliable:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handicap_principle
| nix0n wrote:
| Money laundering is useful but that doesn't mean it's
| good. A Ponzi scheme can generate wealth but it can't
| generate value. Wealth without value is maybe not
| wasteful, but it is harmful.
|
| > Where it can be socially harmful is when energy
| consumers don't pay for the cost of the negative
| externalities that the energy they purchase created in
| its generation, but that applies to all energy usage, not
| just that used in generating PoW.
|
| Bitcoin alone uses as much power as a medium-sized
| nation. The increased power usage has caused old fossil-
| fuel power plants to come back online.
| Udo wrote:
| > That's an example of this class of game-theory based
| ideas.
|
| That's a good point on its own, but it's not a response.
| At no time did I or anyone here in this thread assert
| that "info hazards" do not exist. What _is_ being
| discussed is whether it 's worthwhile to be deferential
| to a person/community who is making claims of being in
| possession of an exceptionally catastrophic piece of
| information that by its nature would preclude public
| scrutiny on ethical grounds.
| traverseda wrote:
| I don't think Yudkowsky is making that claim anywhere?
|
| >At no time did I or anyone here in this thread assert
| that "info hazards" do not exist.
|
| >What is being discussed is whether it's worthwhile to be
| deferential to a person who is making claims
|
| It's honestly really not that clear what you're trying to
| discuss, certainly you haven't been making a clear
| statement like that. I don't think anyone is making
| claims of being in possession of such an infohazard for
| one thing, and if there were I don't think anyone would
| be saying you should be deferential towards someone who
| claimed to have one, sight unseen.
|
| I think you're arguing with a bit of a straw man? Like no
| one is being all "let's be deferential towards Yudkowsky
| because he has the idea equivalent of a nuke". He
| doesn't, to the best of my knowledge, claim to have the
| idea equivalent of a nuke.
|
| I assumed you were claiming that info-hazards don't exist
| because otherwise what exactly are you claiming?
|
| Anyway, if that was your point, granted. Let's not be
| differential towards people who claim to have info-
| hazards, unless they can go into a room and make someone
| laugh themselves to death or something.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBWr1KtnRcI
| mhb wrote:
| _He doesn 't, to the best of my knowledge, claim to have
| the idea equivalent of a nuke._
|
| Well, he isn't willing to reveal how he convinced his
| opponents to let the AI out of the box.
| traverseda wrote:
| Yeah, but his win rate is probably not that much above
| control.
| medstrom wrote:
| Can you link me to when anyone on LessWrong has behaved
| like your "A"?
| user-the-name wrote:
| Now you've just generalised the statement until it
| becomes a truism. So you are now essentially claiming the
| statement is garbage because it is devoid of useful
| meaning.
| [deleted]
| pelario wrote:
| From the article:
|
| >Elevator pitch: Bring enough light to simulate daylight
| into your home and office.
|
| >This idea has been shared in Less Wrong circles for a
| couple years. Yudkowsky wrote Inadequate Equilibria in
| 2017 where he and his wife invented the idea
| thewakalix wrote:
| Yes, I read the same article. Do you believe, based on a
| single word, that the author believes that literally zero
| people in the entire course of human history have ever
| suggested "brighter lights" until Yudkowsky came along?
| drcongo wrote:
| I don't know who any of these people are, but that is
| exactly what the article says, so why should we _not_
| believe that that 's what the author believes?
| sokoloff wrote:
| Because it's far more likely that the author chose
| slightly wrong words that ended up conflating a specific
| invention with being the first human "to invent the idea"
| that "hey, brighter lights would be closer to obviously
| brighter daylight" only 5 years ago. I'd wager that the
| author realizes that more than half of adults today had
| that insight sometime prior to 2017.
| jl6 wrote:
| Some people read websites the way they would read a math
| proof. One tiny error and the whole thing comes down. A
| more charitable reading is often perfectly appropriate.
| forgetfulness wrote:
| The LessWrong community is known for self-citations all
| over the place and heavy use of jargon created by
| themselves, and words redefined as terms-of-art. In light
| of this, if a member claims that one of their prominent
| figures "invented" something, you better take the claim
| at face value.
| necovek wrote:
| If you are reading it as a math proof, I am only
| disputing the claim when the idea was invented.
|
| As I don't bring up the rest of the article's points, I
| am neither supporting nor refuting them with that
| particular comment.
|
| Math (or actually, logic) is a bit more resilient than
| you make it out to be.
| drcongo wrote:
| On the flip side, interpreting everything you read
| through your own lenses of experience and bias instead of
| assuming that the author meant what they wrote seems
| fraught with pitfalls.
| necovek wrote:
| Use of the word "invention" is usually a red flag. I've
| certainly done a number of things I never had knowledge
| of any prior art on, but I never said I "invented" those
| things.
|
| If I wanted to, I'd probably go and research prior art
| _first_ before making use of the word.
|
| Also, I'd say that the article author is not referring
| just to brighter light as the invention, but rather as
| the use of extremely bright light indoors for different
| psychological effects.
| pelario wrote:
| No one in the parent posts has said anything about
| "literally zero people".
|
| The OP made a claim ("invented in 2017"), and this very
| claim is being criticized.
|
| I found perplexing that you interpret the very same words
| in almost opposite ways.
| teknopaul wrote:
| I cant find it again but I read an article about how
| brightness goes up with technology and human spend
| roughly the same proportion of income on light. Kind of
| disproving the led efficiency is good for the environment
| argument. Not revolutionary, better to break that
| pattern.
| uoaei wrote:
| You contradict yourself.
|
| If humans spend same proportion of income on lumens, and
| you get more lumens per watt, then you will use less
| wattage per the same proportion of income. Ergo LEDs
| _are_ more efficient.
| zargon wrote:
| Are you thinking about the cost of the physical lights?
| Because what is being discussed is the cost of energy.
| uoaei wrote:
| Watt-hours are energy. If cost of energy is decreasing
| and you get more lumens per watt with LEDs then the
| benefits stack, they do not cancel.
| Viliam1234 wrote:
| [removed by author as off-topic]
| Udo wrote:
| In hindsight, I should not have included the comment
| about Roko's Basilisk. It was really nothing more than a
| personal observation that had nothing to do with the
| topic at hand. As a result, this thread attracted a lot
| of people who have very strong opinions on an off-topic
| matter, and for that I'm sorry. It muddled an already
| tense discussion on whether any sane person should take
| the claim of inventing brightly lit homes in 2017
| literally or not. For what it's worth, I would have
| deleted the Basilisk portion if people hadn't already
| responded to it.
| Viliam1234 wrote:
| Cool, I didn't even know comments could be deleted! I
| appreciate your reaction.
| forgetfulness wrote:
| So... there was a time when I was on the path to recovery to
| depression, had a bit of a hiccup when I found myself in a very
| tiny room that served as storage space in my (dear, helpful)
| uncle's apartment.
|
| So besides pushing all the stuff he had stashed away and doing
| some feats of organization there, I put some extremely bright led
| lamp pointing from the window to the rest of the room, flooding
| it with white light that made it as bright as day. It was really
| cheap off my local Home Depot-equivalent.
|
| It really fixed my mood, fewer intrusive thoughts, less of a
| depressive state, more tranquility, if I had rougher times,
| psychotic episodes for instance, it would also calm them.
|
| Years later I'm much better, and though things aren't easy, they
| only get better as I put grow lights and plants in what otherwise
| would be a dark apartment (I get the white ones that advertise a
| broad spectrum light but doesn't go into ultraviolet on a local
| hardware store, rather than the purple ones that everyone is
| putting on their apartments on NY). I reclaim the space room by
| room with brightness and plants.
| kumarvvr wrote:
| I'm from India. Lighting in my middle class house, since forever,
| has been poor. I never consciously felt it when I was still
| studying. Just that the rooms were dark and I would prefer to
| play/study outside, or in the front room, where the door was
| always open, allowing a lot of sunlight.
|
| I realized the lighting factor a few years back. Now, My own home
| has two lights in every room and whenever I am
| studying/reading/cooking, I always have them both on.
|
| The difference is stark. Perhaps I am clutching my pearls when I
| say this, but I feel my quality of life has improved with better
| lighting.
|
| I also got my walls painted with very light colors, and the
| ambient light is just amazing.
|
| Good lighting is a blessing.
| sinyug wrote:
| > The difference is stark.
|
| For led lighting, 20W (ceiling fittings) for every 100 sf in
| rooms with light walls provides a lot of illumination in my
| experience. Can double that for kitchens etc.
| samstave wrote:
| An interesting question regarding lighting's effect on studying
| + retaining material + focus ;
|
| Does the entire space need to be well lit - or the object of
| your focus (which can require the entire scene (such as a lab
| etc) - but when it comes to reading and computing. If you have
| a spot on your book or your computer that was of the sun-like
| quality, (obviously without glare on screens), would that
| suffice to aid in focus and retention.
|
| I assume that a well lite complete space serves a more
| biological soothing and depression help.
|
| So it would be interesting to know if there are differing
| applications of sun-like light based on the goals.
|
| At late actual night, a sun-like spotlight on your focus might
| be good. When you're up and active, then light the whole
| space...
| Freak_NL wrote:
| It's a shame the article doesn't talk about the actual LED
| components; I could use some pointers.
|
| I built my living room lighting myself using a Raspberry Pi, a
| PCA9685 PWM IC (on one of those convenient little boards), a
| couple of MOSFETs and resistors on a breadboard, wiring
| (obviously), and fifteen lighting armatures that each have LEDs
| arranged on a square of about 15 cm2. The LEDs are all of the
| 5050 RGBWW type (red, green, blue, and warm white), where the
| warm white LEDs perform the bulk of normal lighting. These are
| all mounted on the ubiquitous 12 mm 12 V LED strips, and are
| glued to an aluminium backplane, in nine parallel strips of 15 cm
| (9 LED components each). Each armature unit is covered by an MDF
| frame with a diffuser plate with a high light transmission
| suitable for LEDs, and the frames snap on to the armature units
| with magnets (that works really well and looks really good).12
|
| This works well for such an amateur setup, but the two main
| issues are attrition due to heat death (presumably), and a wish
| for a little more lumens output. So for the next generation of
| these I want to keep the same form factor, but I'm thinking of
| making custom (replaceable!) PCBs with RGB LEDs and separate warm
| whites LEDs on an aluminium-backed PCB (JLCPCB can manufacture
| this type); keeping the nine-parallel-strips layout, but
| foregoing the backplane to allow heat to dissipate in the space
| between ceiling drywall and the floor above.
|
| What I'm stuck on is how to find out where to source the warm-
| white LED SMD components that are actually good and not just
| tolerable. That is, good light colour, high CRI, etc, and where
| to get them as a consumer. Does anyone know which communities on
| the Internet know this?
|
| Still a bit of a learning curve there regarding working with SMDs
| and designing PCBs, but that's part of the fun.
|
| 1: Testing progress in 2017:
| https://twitter.com/jdhoek/status/828319063097143297
|
| 2: Finished with their diffuser covers; three of the units are
| visible here (note that the ceiling beading trim is still missing
| -- long since finished of course):
| https://twitter.com/jdhoek/status/885499829052485632/photo/2
| ghostly_s wrote:
| If you're looking to increase component life you definitely
| don't want to forgo the backplane; heatsinking is absolutely
| critical for high brightness LED longevity. There is too much
| heat being put out by that tiny chip for convective cooling to
| be of any use without spreading it out first. The problem is,
| unless they are specifically marketed as such, those LED strips
| usually do not have any thermal management, meaning that heat
| is not being transferred through the strip board into your
| backplane.
|
| Unless you're well-versed in PCB thermal management design, I
| wouldn't attempt designing your own LED boards - get prefab
| units like those sold by https://www.ledsupply.com/ , which you
| can screw directly onto a heatsink. And if you really do want
| to design a custom board, the emitters LEDSupply packages are a
| good place to start--there are only a handful of manufacturers
| for high-quality high-brightness diodes and they pretty much
| stock them all. You can find Cree XLamp LEDs for example at any
| of the major component retailers.
| Tepix wrote:
| I'd also be interested in this.
|
| I bought a 4-in-1 E27 socket adapter and plugged 4x 16W bright
| (1400 lumen), high CRI (>97) Livarno Lux LED bulbs into it for my
| home office and it's been great, but having it brighter would be
| even better!
| birken wrote:
| There are many aquarium lighting companies that make these types
| of fixtures, because this intensity of lighting is exactly what
| people want to (and do) simulate over their aquariums (though
| generally at spectrums that are bluer than daylight)!
|
| I think in terms of cost what the OP is not realizing is that
| when you are talking about hundreds of watts of LEDs, that is a
| lot of heat that is _very concentrated_. It takes a thoughtful
| design and active cooling to ensure the fixture is safe and the
| LEDs are kept at the proper temperates to maximize their life and
| performance. You don 't really need to worry about active cooling
| when you have a few low wattage LED bulbs spread throughout a
| room. But cram a ton of them together in a small area and you
| absolutely do.
| andi999 wrote:
| Dont forget you also cannot read you monitor/laptop anymore.
| stingraycharles wrote:
| Good example of such lighting would be Kessil:
| https://kessil.com/aquarium/freshwater_A360.php
|
| As you can see, heat management is a prime feature of these
| lights, and the quality in general is absolutely amazing (it's
| priced accordingly, though).
| aaron695 wrote:
| johnmarcus wrote:
| once it becomes a $1000 product, the number you can sell
| dramatically decreases. Hence, these existing products that do
| this are $10,000 and up.
|
| The price has little to do with the R&D and manufacturing cost,
| it really has to do with how small the market is. Once you have a
| customer that is willing to pay $1,000 for this novelty, they
| will likely also pay $10k for the novelty.
|
| Also....I seriously doubt artificially extending daylight hours
| is good for anyones health.
| londons_explore wrote:
| If you really want 100k lux in indoor spaces, it will cost rather
| a lot of electricity. It works out to 2300 kWh per day to light
| the average US home to sunlight brightness for 8 hours per day.
| So 75x the current typical electricity use!
|
| If everyone wanted that, I don't think the nation could even
| produce that much power.
| rdtwo wrote:
| Home lighting solutions are absolutely shit. Idk why nobody has
| invented anything better but there could be so much more light in
| our houses with modern tech.
|
| I think the problem really is cost. Good lighting costs 1000s of
| dollars and it really hasn't been accepted socially that a modern
| house needs that like it does a fancy kitchen or an ac unit.
|
| Fundamentally lighting is a hardware business and hardware isn't
| very profitable
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Yes, with LED lighting we have entered a whole new world of
| lighting possibilities that I think designers, builders,
| manufacturers are just slowly opening their eyes to.
|
| Forget your smart homes, lighting (even decorative) is where it
| is at.
| bbasketball wrote:
| The article didn't mention anything about vitamin D, which I
| probably care more about than feeling like the artificial light
| is real sunlight.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| You need UV light to generate vitamin D, which you probably
| don't want in your house (it will cause color fading and
| deterioriation in fabrics, upholstery, etc.)
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| I feel like I've gained a nice incremental improvement in
| lighting just by changing all my bulbs to high CRI LEDs with
| around 5000-5500K color temperature. The perceived brightness is
| higher than with typical "soft white" bulbs, and it even feels
| better being in the room. The biggest problem I have yet to solve
| is that my living room has no overhead lighting.
| JohnHaugeland wrote:
| Unsurprisingly, this exists. There are entire home lighting
| stores, and if they won't do, try going to a photography store.
|
| I don't understand blog articles of the form "I listened to
| Elizier Yudkowsky, and I agree, this thing I can totally buy
| today should be created."
| franciscop wrote:
| Now I want to make a fake window for my bathroom, what have you
| done OP? Just when I finished my DIY window-fitted planter.
| quwert95 wrote:
| Very related to this, I've been trying to relocate a video about
| "making a sun in a box" where the creator does the following: -
| goes over power and lumens, basic wiring for a bare LED. -
| details how the color of light matters. - instructs how to
| measure the focal length of a fresnel lens for parallel light
| rays. - how to make an appropriately sized box that can be
| stacked in both directions to crate a "window" effect.
|
| I've spent tens of hours trying to relocate this particular
| video; I thought it was a "DIY Perks" video but either he deleted
| it or it was someone very similar. It's so similar to DIY Perks'
| projector project and satellite dish sun project that it's
| uncanny, but it's neither of those videos.
|
| If anyone knows this video and has a link I would be
| appreciative.
| UnpossibleJim wrote:
| This isn't quite what you're looking for, but this has some of
| what you're looking for, which is how to get the "parallel
| light effect" that the sun has, so it doesn't look like a bulb,
| and diffuses properly:
|
| https://youtu.be/6bqBsHSwPgw
|
| Hope this helps a little.
| quwert95 wrote:
| It's not _the_ video, but it certainly has some of what I am
| looking for. Thank you; it 's appreciated.
| TheCowboy wrote:
| I take a hobby interest in lighting as design and art, and
| probably have more lamps than I should have. My personal view is
| that it's not really an area that is being ignored. There are a
| lot of companies in this space developing new lighting.
|
| One thing that concerns me about investing a lot into current LED
| lighting is that it seems like the tech is still evolving. At
| least that is my impression. I don't really like tech that gives
| the illusion that it will last a long time but ends up useless
| after 2 years. I see some really interesting lighting designs but
| it's all built into the lamp---does this mean lamps, usually a
| durable good, are just disposable units now? LEDs are supposed to
| fade over time---what do you do with a perfectly good standard
| bulb that's producing 25% less light? It still takes up an entire
| lamp socket. If it's a whole unit, that's a footprint in your
| home occupying space producing significantly less output.
|
| Some LED bulbs I bought a few years ago are basically outdated in
| terms of light quality. I think my favorite bulb that I've tried
| is by Cree. People don't often believe that the difference is
| noticeable but when I swap out bulbs of various types they can
| notice how much better a room feels or the colors pop more.
|
| You also can't buy several 'bright home' sunlight level lights
| cheaply just to see what looks better, so I wonder if this might
| be an area that keeps brick and mortar lighting stores or
| sections relevant.
|
| Then there's also the environmental concern of eliminating any of
| the gains of reduced power consumption by buying more powerful
| LED bulbs that consume just as much electricity.
|
| Another aside: If you're bored, playing around with lighting in
| Unreal Engine 5 is pretty fun. UE5 seems very impressive.
| dheera wrote:
| IKEA has these backlit fake windows they use in store displays
| in their curtain section. I wish they would sell the fake
| windows as well. The light actually looks natural.
| bttger wrote:
| In Germany they sell these LED Panels, though not with the
| same dimensions used for their curtain installations. But
| unfortunately it looks like they are discontinuing these
| products. I just searched for "LED Panel" on their website
| and all listings say "Letzte Chance! Nur noch kurze Zeit
| erhaltlich." (Last chance! Still available for a short time
| only).
| quelsolaar wrote:
| If someone wants to start this company get in touch. At shimmer
| industries we are building the control system to power this kind
| of thing. I'm founder and CTO and you can reach me at eskil at
| shimmerindustries dot com
| mycowerk wrote:
| I think bright room lighting is a very promising avenue for SAD
| and circadian rhythm issues.
|
| Last year, for my house plants, I suspended a pair of 100w full
| spectrum grow lights in my living room. Throughout the winter
| I've been using my kitchen table as a workspace and I swear this
| is the first time in my life that I've completely avoided SAD and
| my circadian rhythm has been sufficiently advanced that I'm now a
| morning person. In my configuration the lights are suspended
| behind me, the glare from having them in direct eyesight is
| problematic.
|
| Has been absolutely wonderful and can definitely recommend giving
| it a try, the "quantum board" full spectrum lamps are getting
| really affordable.
| hrdwdmrbl wrote:
| I have done something like this myself. I did the simpler thing
| of simply buying a single 150W high lumen high lux LED bulb. It's
| very bright. It's maybe an 70% solution.
| hrdwdmrbl wrote:
| The other hack you can find is to look at "warehouse" lights or
| outdoor flood lights. Those things are very powerful on their
| own.
| thaeli wrote:
| For anyone interested in doing real lighting CAD and simulation,
| one of the true professional-grade tools for architectural
| lighting design is available for free. Dialux Evo is a great
| tool, though there's a bit of a learning curve.
| evolve2k wrote:
| I'm very interested to learn lighting design towards creating
| intimate, cozy, warm indoor spaces. Any advice on where I can
| learn more of the err "Art of Lighting Design"? I have a design
| degree so I'm across general colour and design theories but
| seeking resources specifically about lighting spaces using a
| more opinionated approach/ set of principals.
| egypturnash wrote:
| When I lived in Seattle, my solution was a 2' square fluorescent
| panel I got from a gardening supply place called "The Indoor Sun
| Shop". I grew up in the South and got real bad seasonal
| depression up there; it probably saved my life. I paid all of
| $300 for it. Plus like twenty bucks for a mechanical timer,
| because I discovered that there were a lot of mornings where I
| was too depressed and mopey to turn it on myself. I kept it in
| the home office I worked in and it did a _lot_ to shut up that
| little voice that suggested killing myself as the solution to
| every problem.
| genewitch wrote:
| there was a post a day or two ago about vitamin D3, as well as
| academic literature finally catching up to medical science vis
| a vis vitamin D3.
|
| I won't cite, but only because i don't have a way to index my
| personal PDF repository, but the common consensus among people
| who study such things is that anyone living above the 20th
| parallel (or below, technically) absolutely _must_ supplement
| vitamin D3, as even a full day in the sun naked is not enough
| to synthesize the amount of D3 we need.
|
| So with that in mind, I'd honestly expect more people to know
| this and be supplementing D3. I don't have any specific
| recommendations, but i do know some guidelines and recent
| discoveries into "max dosing", so here they are. Anecdotally, i
| take 5000-6000iu every two days. I have a weird sleeping
| schedule so i really only notice "a day" as the sort of fog and
| fatigue i get after having gone more than 30 hours without D3.
| Prior to about 2015 or so, the max dosage was in the sub-5000iu
| range, with most supplement's labels stating that 500-1000iu
| was the "RDA" for D3.
|
| However since covid was exponentially responsible for research
| into literally anything that could help alleviate symptoms/the
| disease and accelerate the time to recovery, some doctors were
| giving extremely high iu, up to 250,000iu over the course of a
| few days, or single doses of 50,000-80,000iu, with no
| deleterious effects reported.
|
| Personally, unless i actually get sick, i try to stay under
| 8000-10000iu, at least until someone does a longitudinal study
| about the long term effects of doses higher than that.
|
| As to the article and your point about lights helping - i've
| never noticed anything about any sort of light. I can feel
| awful at noon on a clear day while outside, or awful inside
| under every light type imaginable. I'm glad that light (and
| types of lights) help some people. I just think that the root
| cause is D3 deficiency, and no amount of 20k lumen arrays is
| really going to help.
|
| As a quick aside, if you want to supplement children with D3 i
| recommend finding chewable d3 or a childrens multi-vitamin with
| omega-3/6 fatty acids. A couple of studies (with decent N and
| correlations) showed that merely supplementing omegas in
| children's diets improved the relationship and overall
| wellbeing of the children's parents - you read me right,
| parents didn't have to supplement to get the benefits of the
| children supplementing.
| uoaei wrote:
| All I've heard is the danger of calcium precipitating out of
| your blood and causing arterial blockages. Apparently D3
| potentiates this so that the concentration of blood-borne
| calcium doesn't need to be as high for this to begin.
|
| I've always been wary of going up to max-dose levels for that
| reason.
| genewitch wrote:
| with the way research is going i'd expect to find it's
| something else in conjunction with D3 that causes that, and
| not merely D3. like D3 and a high sodium diet, or D3 and
| <some local thing>.
|
| as mentioned though, i only think that 500-1000iu is not
| enough for most people. I'm not a doctor though, but it is
| one avenue of alleviating SAD as well as lethargy and stuff
| that most people vape/smoke/caffeinate to deal with.
| speakeron wrote:
| You should take D3 with vitamin K2 (talk with your doctor
| first if you're on blood-thinning medications) to avoid
| calcium being dumped into soft tissues (K2 ensures it
| preferentially goes into bones).
|
| It's a good idea to get your vitamin D status tested yearly
| and aim to be at least 50 ng/ml (120 nmol/l), but not more
| than 80 ng/ml (200 nmol/l).
|
| As an example for dosages: I take about 7000 IU of vitamin
| D3 and 180 mcg of vitamin K2 daily. My levels test at about
| 180 nmol/l and my blood calcium is normal.
| voisin wrote:
| How did you determine that ratio of D3 to K2?
| secabeen wrote:
| If you are going to supplement D3 over 5000iu, I would
| recommend getting a 25(OH)D blood test once or twice a year,
| ideally 2-3 months after each change in dose. Then compare
| your levels to the levels here and adjust dosage accordingly:
| https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/vitamind-
| healthprofessiona...
|
| It may also be worth adjusting dosage between winter and
| summer months, depending on the amount of outdoor activity
| you do.
| alex_young wrote:
| Surely you don't mean the 20th parallel, right? That would
| include most of the population of the world wouldn't it?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/20th_parallel_north
| genewitch wrote:
| yes, 20th does include most of the world population. Humans
| started out within 20 degrees of the equator for the vast
| majority of human history, and eventually fanned out, but
| it takes longer than a couple thousand years to make up for
| the loss in D3 synthesis.
|
| edit: it could be 25th or 30th, i have a hard time finding
| a single paper amongst thousands, either way it includes
| 90% of the population of the US, regardless of what
| parallel.
| BoxOfRain wrote:
| I wonder how much the traditional British pessimism has to do
| with the fact our winters are an SAD magnet if there ever was
| one, very short days due to the high latitude and the kind of
| grey soul-penetrating dampness of it being just cold enough to
| make you miserable but not cold enough for the ground to ever
| properly freeze for long. I definitely found taking vitamin D
| supplements helps with the seasonal blues, I'd try a daylight
| simulating lamp but I have quite severe photophobia issues.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Would you tell us a little about your photophobia, I've never
| heard of anyone having that before. Thank you.
| oliveshell wrote:
| I'm not the parent commenter, but I've heard 'photophobia'
| used to refer to the sort of extreme light sensitivity
| experienced by migraine sufferers: not a 'fear of light'
| per se, but rather the perception of bright light as an
| unpleasant or even painful stimulus.
| mawise wrote:
| I've been working on this for my home office. I went with a cheap
| "Sputnik" ceiling lamp, and 2:1 splitters to put 20 75watt Cree
| bulbs on my ceiling. Bulbs have gotten more expensive it seems;
| it cost me ~US$200.
|
| https://imgur.com/a/UdAk6HE
| sharedfrog wrote:
| I've installed eight of these[1] CRI 98+, 5000K, 752 lm strips
| for a total of ~6000 lm, and during the day I use them in
| addition to about 3000 lm from two light bulbs, one of which is a
| nice CRI 90 2700K. I'm very happy with the quality of the light
| from the strips, though I probably should've gone for a few more.
| Another pair directly over the computer desk would be nice.
|
| I generally find them uncomfortable when night starts to fall, at
| which point I just leave the dimmer yellow lights on.
|
| [1] https://www.ledrise.eu/led-strips-modules/led-
| strips/multiba...
| sitting_duck wrote:
| A = 4 pi r^2
|
| So a sphere of 2m radius has a surface of about 50 m^2.
|
| A 1000 lumen bulb illuminates the sphere with app 1000 lm / 50
| m^2 = 20 lux (not 50 lux as OP wrote).
|
| So the calculation is a bit off. OTOH if we had bulbs that shine
| downwards only it would be sufficient to just divide by the
| floor. So 100,000 lm in a 10m^2 room gets you 10,000 lux.
| hanslub42 wrote:
| In many cases (mine included), SAD is not so much about _how
| much_ light we get, but about _when_ : I manage my sleep/wake
| cycle by getting a good dose of light in the morning (I do my
| morning E-mails with a nice strong blueish LED-lamp next to my
| monitor) and dimming/reddening my screens in the evening.
|
| It is not even the level of darkness outside, but the _direction_
| of the level change: I need my lamp from October to January (or
| when I have a gig in Norway in the winter) but already at the
| start of February I feel the light coming back, even though it is
| as dark outside as at the end of November
|
| So, in summary: it is more about the _timing_ of the light than
| the _amount_ (but YMMV, of course)
| magicroot75 wrote:
| It's about timing and intensity. You should aim to get 100,000
| lux into the eye within the first two hours of waking. Dr.
| Andrew Huberman has a comprehensive podcast episode on the
| science behind this: https://youtu.be/NAATB55oxeQ
| seltzered_ wrote:
| I used to think about this deeply, and have flipped the idea
| around - why can't we be doing more work (including writing and
| other computer work) outdoors?
|
| As a start, I've started
| https://www.reddit.com/r/ErgoMobileComputers/ and been going on
| stretches of doing laptop work outside more. By having a setup
| where you've either got the screen closer to the face (less
| glare) or an e-ink display, I've managed being outside for up to
| a few hours.
| lazide wrote:
| The issue I have is that being outdoors is distracting due to
| constantly changing environment. If I'm trying to deep focus on
| something, it doesn't help.
|
| Even worse if the environment is somewhat uncontrolled
| (wilderness, city cafe) as there are potential safety issues if
| I truly deep focus.
|
| If I'm doing meetings, talking to folks, churning through a
| bunch of bs tasks, etc. then it's nice.
| seltzered_ wrote:
| So far I've been learning this takes time to get used to
| (i.e. trying for multi-day streaks of trying to work
| outside), and:
|
| - The ergonomics / screen setup really make a difference in
| whether you can tolerate being there for 1 hour versus 4
| hours.
|
| - I've been pretty intentional about finding spots that have
| are quiet with some constant (e.g. creekside babbling), if
| really needed headphones can help deal with wind noise.
|
| - If going to a coffee shop/bar look for places with outdoor
| seating in a rear area where you're not going to be
| distracted by cars driving by.
|
| - You'll need some old thin wool gloves with finger cutouts
| to deal with coldish days.
| schiho wrote:
| Simulating Daylight isn't very easy, especially not with LED
| diods. https://vgl.ict.usc.edu/Research/OptimalLED/ There was a
| lot of research in covering the daylight spectra by adding
| additional LED diods to get close to daylight. Coming from a
| filmset background, usually strong metal Halide lights are used
| only to simulate a daylight scene, for example the arri daylight
| 18, which is using a Metal Halide 18000 Watt bulb.Attached
| outside of windows. Furthermore light sources (except for lasers)
| drop intensity quadratically, meaning the size of your room is a
| big factor. Talking about LED's, even on shoot's like the
| "mandalorian" where the main light source is a LED-WALL, the
| light isn't enough so that additional Studio lighting is added.
| relaxing wrote:
| Wow, I've never wanted a bill of materials for a conference
| paper before.
|
| Have you seen anyone successfully build a RGBW+Amber array that
| matches their results?
| blunte wrote:
| For a year I had my home office setup with LED strip lights all
| the way around the room. They were mounted on a narrow shelf
| encircling three walls. Color temp was about 6000K.
|
| I loved it, for a while. It felt like a fresh bright day.
| However, after some months of 12 hours a day of working in this
| environment, I started having pain in my eyes, almost as if they
| were being squeezed.
|
| This discomfort persisted for a month after I left my office
| (took a DN work-cation in the Caribbean). As I began looking into
| this, I started reading about issues with blue light. I found
| suggestions that too much blue light was harmful. And likely me
| spending 12+ hours looking at bright monitor screens was also
| harmful.
|
| After returning from my trip, I removed most of my lights and
| turned my monitor brightness way down. Since then, I haven't had
| the same bad feelings.
|
| I would think that light is light, and only brightness and color
| temperature would be the variables. But perhaps there's something
| more, because in general it seems that eyes are fine with outside
| daylight but less fine with indoor lights. I would like to know
| what is best for my comfort and health, but I'm not sure anyone
| really knows; studies and articles often disagree...
| ghosty141 wrote:
| "blue light is harmful" is a highly debated topic. Iirc there
| is no consensus yet and some studies indicate that it's not a
| health risk.
|
| Apart from that, having a screen that is too bright can
| certainly cause problems. Especially if the contrast is very
| stark to the surrounding environment.
|
| I personally use a light theme when it's very bright
| outside/inside and a dark theme when it's dark + my monitor
| brightness at home is set to ~70% which is plenty.
| BizarroLand wrote:
| And a simple test for it would be to buy a $3 set of blue-
| light blocking glasses and see if that solves the problem for
| you rather than throwing out a bunch of far more expensive
| lights.
| wongarsu wrote:
| Some lamps output a better spectrum than others. While the
| distribution of wavelengths output by something glowing with
| black-body radiation (like the sun or an incandescent lamp) is
| very smooth and reminds of a normal distribution, CFLs are
| famous for having terrible light (it's mostly spikes of
| specific frequencies in blue, green and red, and the relative
| height of those can be tuned to get a desired color
| temperature). White LEDs are much better than that: they are
| actually blue LED with a phosphor coating that absorbs the
| light and reemits white light. The light from the phosphor has
| a good, smooth spectrum, but depending on LED quality a good
| portion of the blue light can shine through, giving it much
| more output in the blue wavelengths (even at low color
| temperatures, for the purposes of color temperature you can
| just shifting the rest more into the red, or by cheating and
| adding some red LEDs into the mix).
|
| LEDs that minimize that issue are widely available due to
| demand from photographers, video makers, etc, but they cost a
| good bit more.
| boffinism wrote:
| I wish they'd talked about running costs as well as the price of
| parts in the 'costs' section. It's the electricity bill that puts
| me off. Unless it can be... solar powered?
| Jedd wrote:
| From the article:
|
| "Full-spectrum LEDs seem to output about 75 lumens per watt, so
| if our panel is 20k lumens then we should expect our panel to
| draw 266 watts. This seems reasonable to me. If you leave it on
| 8 hours a day, you're going to use 25 cents per day in
| electricity (at $.12 per kWh)."
|
| Almost anything can be solar powered.
| bambax wrote:
| Photographers often need to build an artificial window or create
| artificial sunlight. Here's a fairly good tutorial on how to do
| that using a used satellite dish:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bqBsHSwPgw
|
| Personally I have affixed studio lights to my home office walls,
| with umbrellas, for Zoom calls (total cost < $200). I find that
| they also enhance my mood / energy levels, so I switch them on
| whenever I need to boost my spirit or productivity.
| archi42 wrote:
| Yeah, definitely not the first to consider this. I remember my
| Dad experimenting with proper lightning (brightness and spectrum)
| in the early to mid 2000s, and to him that was not really that
| novel.
|
| In my office room (32m2/340sqft), I use a commercial rail
| lightning system with three channels/phases (controlled via a
| Sonoff 4CH WiFi switch). Those are commonly used in stores, and I
| got my rails cheap via the local craigslist-equivalent. With 8m
| of rails (2m not attached, yet) I am very flexible with light
| positioning and can adjust the "light mode" for different room
| usages. Drawback: I am not somebody to buy light fixtures for a
| thousand bucks, so I found it difficult to find appropriate-but-
| still-cheap fixtures. For ambient light (not so bright) I got
| lucky with these cheap GU10 holders [1], into which I put some
| decent bulbs (3000k, CRI90+, 410lumen, dimmable, flickerfree
| [2]). As "desklights" I have bright spots (6400k, CRI95+,
| 1350lumen, 24deg [3]), which should give about 5000 to 7000lux
| with three lamps. The 6400k is a bit cold and the bulbs are non-
| replaceable, but other LED alternatives would have been much more
| expensive, so I got these to experiment with. So far I am happy.
|
| One interesting alternative are metal-halide lamps[4]: Those can
| often be bought in used condition for cheap, and offer
| replaceable bulbs by default (G12 socket). They are only little
| less energy efficient than my high CRI LEDs, and the spectrum
| also seems to be quite good. However, they start at 35W (e.g.
| 4200k, CRI91, 3400lumen) and don't seem to be dimmable. For a
| single spot that's a bit much, and spreading the light on the
| ceiling by using three or four is a bit expensive with our energy
| prices. They also have some additional drawbacks like warmup and
| cooldown times. Though maybe I'll modify one or two with WiFi
| switches so I can use them to boost the normal desklight using
| some Home Assistant automations.
|
| [1] https://www.ledpanelgrosshandel.de/3-phasenspot-
| schienenleuc... [2] https://www.greenandco.de/en/seocrap/a-100081
| [3] https://www.reichelt.de/de/en/15w-led-tracklight-
| colorcode-6... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal-
| halide_lamp
| kijin wrote:
| Having grown up in Korea and lived in America, Canada, and the
| UK, one thing I consistently noticed about all those Western
| homes is how dark they are.
|
| Most homes where I come from have a large, flat lamp in the
| center of the ceiling of each room that evenly illuminates the
| entire room. Large spaces may have more than one such lamp. In
| the past, this was accomplished with a bunch of fluorescent tubes
| arranged to look like a single large lamp. These days, it's all
| LED. People also put lamps on the bedside table, above the dining
| table, and other places they want to accentuate, but it's always
| in addition to, not instead of, the large ceiling lamp.
|
| Most of the American/Western homes I've been to don't have a
| single bright light in the living room or any bedroom, relying
| more often on several low-temperature lamps scattered around the
| space. It looks really nice, it's perfect for watching movies,
| and it may have been more energy-efficient in the past. But it's
| just so damn dark, especially if the room doesn't face the sun.
| firasd wrote:
| Yeah Americans seem to associate 'bright white light' with
| commercial or institutional spaces and dimmer yellow light with
| 'home' but it's not a universal view, the aesthetic is cultural
| dandare wrote:
| I always wanted to build a "periscope windows".
|
| Have a large light-gathering lens on the outside, then focus the
| rays into a much thiner "sun tunnel", bring them underground (in
| the same shaft as the water and heating pipes), then expand the
| rays into a fake window. If this was possible it would completely
| change the way we build homes, we could have many underground
| floors with "periscope windows" and a towers of light gathering
| lenses on the roof.
|
| Unfortunately this is not physically possible, not just a real
| picture but not even the light can be made parallel this way.
| (Maybe some quantum tech will make this possible one day.)
| fbanon wrote:
| Not possible.
|
| https://physics.stackexchange.com/a/413990
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etendue#Conservation_of_etendu...
| dandare wrote:
| Yep, that is my question :)
| captainmuon wrote:
| One thing they are missing is collimation. You might want the
| light rays to be parallel, to simulate the far away sun and to
| get sharp shadows. I tried to come up with a solution to do this
| in a flat package, but optics is not my strong suit.
|
| Generally, you always have a trade-off here: If you want to get
| rid of the harsh point-like light sources, you have to add a
| diffuser, and then you get indirect light. But too diffused, and
| you get the feeling of sitting in a studio or in a bright cave. I
| think having a window or a skylight with parallel, non-diffused
| light and letting the reflections on the walls diffuse it is
| probably the most natural-looking solution.
| exhilaration wrote:
| There's a comment below yours with a link to a video where a
| youtuber solves that problem:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30497038
| captainmuon wrote:
| Yeah but he uses a huge parabolic mirror, which he places in
| the next room. He mentions fresnel lenses, but they are
| expensive, have color fringes, and depending on the focal
| length the whole light will also not be very flat.
|
| The holy grail would be something that has the size of a
| picture frame, and you can slap below the ceiling, to fake a
| roof window.
|
| If you combine a good fresnel lens with some clever mechanics
| or a micro mirror array light source, I wonder if you could
| even make the angle move over the day? Using fresnel lenses,
| you could also split it up into multiple cells, to make
| cooling easier. But I guess in the end there is a reason why
| the commercial system costs $30.000 and takes more than a
| foot of thickness.
| linsomniac wrote:
| Not "20K lux", but I've spent a fair bit of time improving the
| lighting in my 1970s home. The thinking back then seemed to be
| "What's the minimum we can get away with", leading to a dark,
| shadowy mess.
|
| People have been using broken LCD TVs to build "artificial
| skylights" for years. I came very close to building one, but my
| wife balked at me spending $50 on a broken 55" TV. <shrug> :-)
|
| I recommend searching amazon and home improvement websites for
| "led panel lights", which seem to be a very similar premade
| light. They come in many sizes and shapes, many of them are meant
| for 2x2 or 4x2 foot drop ceiling installation, but others are
| designed for flush surface mount on drywall.
|
| I put, as a test, a 12" round one in our small laundry room, and
| the light it makes is a great upgrade from the can light that
| used to be in there.
|
| For my garage, where I didn't want to spend $600 on a bunch of
| the panels, I got a dozen LED strip lights that look kind of like
| tube lights, and spread them all over the ceiling. Provides a
| nice, even, bright light for when I use it as a workshop.
| However, over the last 18 months I've had pretty much every one
| of them "burn out" at least once. I'm guessing that it is the
| 120V power supply built into each unit that is the problem. The
| vendor has been good about sending me replacements, they have a 3
| year warranty, but I think when they fail again (I'm assuming
| they will) that I will probably look at either just using 24v LED
| strips directly, and a ceiling mounted Meanwell powersupply, or
| maybe I'll look at some of these panel lights.
|
| Another thing I want to do for the garage lights is split them
| into two groups. Right now I have one switch that controls them
| all, but I have had limited luck getting my kids to regularly
| turn them off, leaving 300W of lights burning for hours. I'd
| probably set up maybe 4 of them to go on from the main switch and
| the other 10 to have another, less convenient, switch for when
| I'm doing workshop stuff.
| midjji wrote:
| While Elizer certainly didn't invent the thing, just read the
| references he cites. He was right that its a pain in the ass to
| build and that pretty much all solutions available are no where
| near bright enough despite claiming otherwise. Expense and heat,
| which is really just more expense, aren't the only issues though.
| Assuming the premise that its good for health, another issue is
| that we do not know if the health effects require us to match the
| spectrum. Notably the reliable research on the topic I have read
| have always used number of hours outdoors in sunlight, not some
| contraption. He thinks it worked for his wife, but someone
| depressed is very likely to support their loved ones delusions
| that their personal effortful attempt to help worked, and if that
| loved one is persistent and persuasive, often delude themselves
| into thinking that. Either way, it would be a single sample.
| Research is very much needed, and building such a rig is a fun
| project and a great way to learn exactly how much effect your
| house control systems really allow.
| rhaps0dy wrote:
| If I just like the daylight-bright lights, I don't need a
| research paper to tell me that. I would buy many of these for
| several hundred PS if I lived in cloudy London again.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| My wife laughs a little at my lighting mania[0].
|
| I bought a bunch of desk lamps and put them around the perimeter
| of my home office, and equipped each one with a 300W equivalent
| flood bulb pointed straight up (I like indirect light best). Tied
| them all with HA so they turn on with the main room light. So
| when I go into my office and turn on the lights, it's like
| turning on the sun. Not literally, of course, the sun is pretty
| bright, but it's a heck of a lot brighter than any other area of
| the house.
|
| Pretty sure it's the only reason I survive winter in a good mood.
|
| [0] When I go down to the home store, she almost always asks what
| bulbs I'm looking for this time. LOL
| Corrado wrote:
| I think a better option would be to use a light pipe like Solar
| Tube[0][1]. I've worked in an office with one and it was just
| wonderful. Natural sunlight is just so invigorating, I can't
| really explain it.
|
| Anyway, these tubes don't seem to be too expensive and they are
| basically free to operate. And with modern head units they seem
| to capture the most sunlight possible, even on overcast days.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VP2APH2TKyY [1]
| https://solatube.com/
| astrange wrote:
| If you have Hue lights, make sure to upgrade to the new
| generation that just came out. It's much brighter. The color ones
| were sold out, but I found it worthwhile to upgrade even though I
| can't make them blue anymore.
|
| Otherwise, Cree is one of the best home bulb brands.
| jusssi wrote:
| Funny thing about Hue, instead of brighter, I wish they'd go
| dimmer. If I want more light, I can always get more bulbs. But
| currently the lowest brightness (at least for the standard
| white tones bulbs I have) is too bright to work for evening /
| night scenes.
| astrange wrote:
| I've noticed that too, but if you shift hues to be very
| yellow then it feels a bit darker. I've been satisfied with
| that.
| TheCowboy wrote:
| Cree is a good choice. The 'smart' versions of their bulbs are
| also convenient for if you want to set it to 'daylight' 5000k
| during the day---it looks better (IMHO) in a room that gets
| some natural light during the day---and change it to a warmer
| temp at night.
| jakobov wrote:
| I wonder what one gains by using super bright lights. The pupil
| will adjust to counter the effects of lighting.
|
| Adding more lux just makes your pupil smaller. Or am I missing
| something? Maybe its non linear? Or maybe the idea is to reach
| the minimal pupil diameter? Or maybe happiness is somehow
| dependent on pupil diameter?
| playpause wrote:
| My guess is it's some complex neurological response triggered
| by 'knowing' (or being sufficiently convinced) that one is
| surrounded by bright outdoor sunlight, rather than a
| physiological response powered by the light absorbed by the
| retina. What matters is the brain's estimate of the current lux
| value, which would take pupil size into account. This is just a
| guess.
| medstrom wrote:
| 1. It's not all about eyes. The skin also reacts to light.
|
| 2. Even though your pupil shrinks, you get a larger total
| number of light rays into the eye. Your visual cortex adjusts
| the image so you don't realize that a sunlit scene is a
| million times brighter than a lamplit scene. These extra rays
| may still affect something hormonal.
| BizarroLand wrote:
| 3. Even if it's partially psychosomatic or placebo, you
| would still be reinforcing the effect by telling yourself
| that you're doing it as a substitute.
| rocqua wrote:
| On a sunny day, your pupil also adjusts to the effects of
| lighting.
|
| And yet, people tend to enjoy a sunny day just from the sight.
| This is attempting to replicate that.
| belorn wrote:
| I wonder how important the infrared heat is to the "sight" of
| a sunny day.
| jaidan wrote:
| Metal-halide HID lamps are best for this purpose. They have the
| best colour rendition of all lighting and they come in different
| sizes and colour temperatures.
|
| My pick for a bright daylight would be about 6000K colour temp
| and I'd just throw some fittings in a room then walk outside at
| mid day to determine how many watts Id need to satisfy.
|
| Bonus of these is you can get coloured lamps with more awesomer
| colours than LEDs.BLV is one manufacturer.
|
| Second bonus is if you use a grow lamp in your setup, it'll also
| help reduce the effects of SAD. They use the same fittings.
|
| Oh, and remember diffusion is the key for comfortable indoor use.
| opieters wrote:
| Not a window-like lamp, but bright LED lights are offered by many
| higher-end manufacturers such as Delta Light
| https://www.deltalight.com/en including light-temperature
| configurable ones such this one:
| https://www.deltalight.com/en/products/detail/supernova-line...
|
| However, 10klux seems a bit too much, given the energy needed to
| drive the lamps and overall lamp brightness. Too much light can
| also have negative effects on the eye and moreover, you would
| just be unable to read your screen well at 10klux.
| unglaublich wrote:
| This has been applied for decades. Those 'ceiling windows' in art
| galleries are often false windows with bright daylight lamps
| beneath it.
|
| By the way, the sun produces ~50.000 lux on earth's surface.
| That's 100 times more than in a wall illuminated office. To reach
| that brightness, you would need tens of kilowatts of LED
| lightning for medium and larger sized rooms. That's totally
| infeasible. Also, imagine the heat building up. It will literally
| be like a greenhouse in your room. So in reality, no one actually
| aims for the brightness of the sun. But just something fairly
| bright at a high ('cool') color temperature. That produces the
| same sensation.
| nine_k wrote:
| Many people (including myself) find such brightness levels
| uncomfortable, and wear sunglasses.
|
| Sunlight is free, but electric light is not. This is why light
| in my apartment is very bright but not nearly as bright as the
| streets on a sunny summer day.
| sacrosancty wrote:
| It doesn't need to be the whole room. Just a small patch would
| feel like having a skylight with the sun pouring in.
| michaelt wrote:
| 'Overcast February day in London' is only 5,000 lux at the
| surface, according to my lux meter.
|
| You could achieve that with 750W of LEDs. Of course, that _is_
| still quite a lot of power.
| BizarroLand wrote:
| Depends on distance. They make e27 screw in LED bulbs that
| will put out over 5,000 lux but you would need to hold the
| bulb pretty close to your face to get the full value of it.
| runeks wrote:
| Not only that, but it would also be impossible to see what's on
| your computer screen as this isn't designed to outshine the
| sun.
| sterlind wrote:
| if such a thing were possible, would it be healthy to use a
| monitor with a 10K lux backlight? I can't decide if this
| would help or just fry your eyes.
| netcan wrote:
| Perhaps in theory, considering that when you look at
| someone's face outside on a sunny day, it is brighter than
| that. OTOH, staring directly into a lightbulb isn't
| pleasant, so I suppose there's more to this.
|
| Either way, I think the best way to deal with bright light
| isn't a brighter screen. It's an unlit screen, like e-ink
| or something.
| Lascaille wrote:
| >would it be healthy to use a monitor with a 10K lux
| backlight?
|
| The eyes adapt to brighter backlights but you end up not
| being able to see your desk.
|
| One major annoyance is that eye floaters become _a lot_
| more prominent the smaller your pupils are.
| novok wrote:
| Well the sun makes 50klux of light on the surface, and we
| look at that amount all the time with no harm.
| ericye16 wrote:
| Yes, but usually we don't look _into_ that.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| You don't look at the surface of the earth?
| bbarnett wrote:
| He's of the concave theorists, which take the flat Earth
| society one step further, and believe the Earth is
| concave.
|
| And surely for them, you can see the horror of such large
| amounts of light being funneled, being reflected back and
| forth, over and over. So no, most assuredly, he does not
| look at the Earth!
| picture wrote:
| does that also include infra red/non visible parts of the
| spectrum? sorry I'm not familiar with the unit involved
| revax wrote:
| No, lux is based on lumen and itself founded on the human
| perception of light using the luminous efficiency function.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminous_efficiency_function
| rbosinger wrote:
| I bought a studio LED panel from Amazon (for videography
| generally). It came with a stand that attaches to the desk to be
| used as a webcam light but I mounted it on a shelf and it hangs
| over my head like the sun. It has a 3000k-8000k temperature range
| and that and the brightness can be controlled by a remote. There
| are a bunch like this available under different brand names. For
| the price I've found it to be a good solution for now and I also
| have a photography light as a bonus.
| Tilman_launch wrote:
| You might like an ecologic option. Think of a fiber optic cable
| or mirror tube that can be placed from a roof to any room in the
| house. Could not find a good english translation, but similar to
| this one: https://www.lichtkamin.de/
| manmal wrote:
| Have you seen any options that don't require a fat tube running
| through the house?
| relyks wrote:
| The option of using fiber optics cables to redirect sunlight
| is discussed in this article:
| https://www.buildinggreen.com/blog/fiber-optics-daylighting
| One of the companies mentioned looks pretty interesting:
| https://himawarisolar.com/
| Tilman_launch wrote:
| Definitely the problem to solve. I thought about splitting
| this up into hundreds of optical fiber filaments. These could
| fit in wall elements or next to other pipe elements.
| namibj wrote:
| Etendue will limit your success, though. Especially if you
| don't track the sun (or there is a cloud in the way).
| Khelavaster wrote:
| What about an orange-light lighting company which fixes all the
| awful blue streetlights we drive by?
| kilotaras wrote:
| See also "100,000 lumens to treat seasonal affective disorder: A
| proof of concept RCT of bright, whole-room, all-day (BROAD) light
| therapy" on
| https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.10.29.21265530v...
| bonestamp2 wrote:
| I love the idea of this mirror that sits outside, and moves with
| the sun, to reflect more sunlight in through your window:
| https://solenica.com/
|
| Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of confidence in it... the
| company has been looking at building this product since about
| 2013 (same founder created a similar product on indiegogo called
| "Lucy") and neither product seems to be on the market yet
| (uncertain if the indiegogo product shipped).
| grishka wrote:
| This assumes you have sunlight outside in the first place.
| austinjp wrote:
| > Elevator pitch: Bring enough light to simulate daylight into
| your home and office. This idea has been shared in Less Wrong
| circles for a couple years. Yudkowsky wrote Inadequate Equilibria
| in 2017 where he and his wife invented the idea
|
| Uh, no. See "lighting design" [0] and the related field
| "daylighting" [1].
|
| The more I read of Less Wrong the more it seems More Naive.
| Lighting solutions and their effects on mood have been explored
| outside of "Less Wrong circles" for decades, probably for
| centuries.
|
| [0]
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architectural_lighting_desig...
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylighting
| austinjp wrote:
| Downvoter(s), care to explain?
| vkk8 wrote:
| I can find dozens of "bright lights" in a Finnish online store.
| Looking at the specs of one of them
| (https://www.verkkokauppa.com/fi/product/714353/Innolux-
| Epic-...), it promises 1500 lux when sitting half a meter from
| the lamp.
| Nition wrote:
| I saw an attempt at a similar thing posted on Hacker News in the
| past. Rather than use many standard lightbulbs, he used one
| massive 30,000 lumen "corn cob" bulb: https://www.benkuhn.net/lux
|
| Discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21660718
|
| However, there is now an update on the blog where he seems to
| have independently switched to the "lumenator" system as
| described in the links on today's post:
|
| > Update 2020-11-16: For my home, I ended up switching from the
| corncob bulb to three 7-way splitters and 21 100W equivalent
| 5000K Cree bulbs from Home Depot.
| [deleted]
| chooban wrote:
| Both Ben and Lincoln work at Wave (as do I), so I suspect they
| may well have been comparing notes.
|
| https://www.wave.com
| Maursault wrote:
| No mention of tint, only color temperature.
|
| > In my experimentation I discovered that I liked closer to 5000
| in the mornings and closer to 2700 in evenings.
|
| The color temperature of the sun at noon is 5000K. So at noon,
| you want your light to be 5000K or higher, especially outdoors
| (who needs auxiliary light outdoors at noon? Exactly. High color
| temperatures are bullshit.) But it really has more to do with
| eyes than the sun: the more dark adaptation your eyes currently
| have, the more that blue, cooler light is blinding, the more
| warmer light is comfortable. I don't know what it is about old
| timers that insist on using 6500K light even after midnight. They
| are literally blinding themselves and slowly doing permanent
| damage to their eyes. Light that cool is unnatural, and I suppose
| that part of the attraction, but mostly it is the mistake of
| believing that the brighter a light appears, the more you can
| see. This is completely false, of course. Beyond low light
| levels, brightness has absolutely nothing to do with what can be
| seen. The accuracy of color rendition is more important than
| brightness in regards to what can be seen, and the state of one's
| eyes is more important than brightness in regards to what can be
| seen. It is very possible to likely that one can see more with
| dark adapted eyes _in the dark_ than with 2000Lm of 6500K light.
|
| Also not mentioned is drivers, and this is critical.
| Manufacturers are using the cheapest crap they can find, which
| means there's a lot of LED drivers out there with PWM. There is a
| huge rift in the lumens community about PWM, so much so that it
| is mostly banned from being discussed. The tl;dr is that PWM
| sucks and hurts some people, causes migraines, but some people
| don't notice PWM, and many of them are so egotistical and bereft
| of empathy that they don't care about anything that doesn't
| affect them.
|
| In order of importance, a half-decent light should have
|
| 1) No PWM, nor anything like it, instead the driver should employ
| constant current
|
| 2) Good tint (neutral white, like white sand... without any green
| or yellow cast, but a rosy cast is ok)
|
| 3) 3200K to 5200K color temperature (depends on the eyes, which
| depends on the time of day)
|
| and at a very distant last:
|
| 4) effective brightness
| adrian_b wrote:
| The only reason why most old CRT displays were calibrated for a
| 6500 K color temperature was because the red phosphor had a
| lower efficiency than the others.
|
| Using a white with less red and more green and blue allowed the
| vendors to advertise a higher brightness for the displays.
|
| The same reason applied to fluorescent lamps. Choosing 6500 K
| allowed the vendors to advertise a higher luminous flux at a
| given electrical power.
|
| Nowadays there is absolutely no technical reason to use a white
| with the 6500 K color temperature, even if the low-quality LED
| lamps with a single orange phosphor still have better
| efficiency when emitting more bluish light, but those have a
| too low CRI to be an acceptable lighting solution.
|
| Nevertheless, for the lighting of my home I do not like a too
| yellowish white, so I use LEDs with the 4000 K color
| temperature, which, unfortunately, are much harder to find than
| those with a yellowish 2700 K or a bluish 6500 K.
| kragen wrote:
| I made some notes about this in 02013
| https://dercuano.github.io/notes/10klux-led.html and 02017
| https://dercuano.github.io/notes/illumination-cost.html which may
| be of interest to anyone trying this, but Eliezer and Raemon
| tried the experiment and published their notes before I published
| Dercuano in 02019.
| faeyanpiraat wrote:
| Why put leading zeroes in years?
| klodolph wrote:
| https://longnow.org/
| Tepix wrote:
| Just wait until after the year 099 and then it might catch
| on! /s
| dymk wrote:
| To feel special and prompt people to ask about their funny
| hat
| mazak wrote:
| There's also an alternative approach to put a leading 1
| called Holocene Calendar:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_calendar
| khazhoux wrote:
| No need to feel bad. Those two didn't actually "invent" the
| idea of bright lighting. It's not a creditable idea, really.
| kragen wrote:
| I don't feel bad, I just wanted to make it clear that I
| wasn't trying to claim some kind of priority.
|
| But this isn't really just a question of "bright lighting",
| which of course occurs outdoors all the time, anywhere
| someone is doing arc welding, in any steel mill, etc. It's a
| more complex proposition: "Possibly seasonal affective
| disorder is due in significant part to the fact that indoor
| lighting is almost always orders of magnitude dimmer than
| sunlight. Possibly indoor lighting is so dim in part because
| providing sunlight-class lighting with Edison's incandescent
| lights would be punishingly expensive and require data-
| center-style massive air conditioning. However, modern high-
| efficiency LEDs and even fluorescent tubes bring sunlight-
| class lighting within practical reach of everyday people."
|
| Still, this is hardly a brilliantly original idea on my part,
| so it's not surprising that the same idea occurred to
| Eliezer. I was pleased to see that he tried it for his wife's
| SAD and that it worked.
| JoelJacobson wrote:
| I live in Sweden (country with severe darkness) and just bought
| two Virtual Sun united from https://innerscene.com/
|
| NOTE: Be _extremely_ careful when transporting /moving these
| units, they easily break. The supplier who imported them on my
| behalf got two shipments with broken units until they finally got
| one that wasn't damaged. This happened despite FRAGILE markings
| on the packaging.
|
| Innerscene's Virtual Sun is much smaller and lighter than the
| classic Coelux. Coelux: Weight: 300 kg
| (660 lb) Dimensions: 2375 x 1675 x 691 mm (93.5 x 65.9 x
| 27.2") Innerscene Virtual Sun: Weight: 39 kg
| (85.8 lbs) Dimensions: 1001 x 514 x 255 mm (39 7/16 x 20
| 1/4 x 10")
| Nextgrid wrote:
| What's the pricing for these? Looks interesting.
| JoelJacobson wrote:
| Back in 2021-10-06 when I bought mines, they were crazy
| expensive!
|
| I paid 89239 SEK (~9349 USD) +25% VAT = 111549 SEK (~11685
| USD) per unit.
|
| Not sure about the VAT rate if buying from US.
|
| Hopefully they have reduced the prices since then, not sure.
| hackernewds wrote:
| how long do these last? you seem to have made a huge
| capital investment here
| JoelJacobson wrote:
| Not sure, haven't even tried them yet, still renovating
| the house, three years and counting. But according to the
| specs: L70 >=50,000 hours at 25degC
| ambient
|
| L70 is "An LED is considered to have reached its rated
| life at that point in time when it emits 30% less light
| than it initially did. This 70% brightness level is
| termed "L70" and may also be referred to as Lumen
| Maintenance." (https://nunvdata.unvlt.com/uploads/Underst
| anding_L70_and_Why...)
| samstave wrote:
| What does that amount of product loss due to the OEMs bottom
| line, let alone the extreme waste directly into the
| environment.
| asf9b8hqw4n wrote:
| Did you take any pictures of the inner workings of the broken
| ones by chance? I'm curious if there are any hints about how
| they work, or the Coelux ones.
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| It's not that crazy of an idea especially in winter when SAD is
| worst and any extra power you waste in your house heats it so it
| isn't really wasted.
|
| One of my favorite places on earth is my marijuana grow and the
| incredible amount of beautiful light they grow under. I've
| contemplated a scaled down version in my house. I could grow
| plants all over the place under the lighting like being outside,
| no matter what the season.
| faeyanpiraat wrote:
| SAD, as in being "very sad"?
| cricalix wrote:
| Seasonal Affective Disorder probably.
| [deleted]
| code_duck wrote:
| I've used horticultural fluorescents as indoor lighting. It was
| fairly pleasant.
| TheCowboy wrote:
| According to what I've found, grow lights can emit enough UV
| rays to make them (unfortunately) a non-starter for inside your
| home.
| BizarroLand wrote:
| Looks like for LEDs at least that is not true:
|
| "commercially available LED light sources (for horticultural
| or other applications) can be considered human safe when
| designed, installed and used in accordance with the
| applicable standards, regulations and manufacturer's
| instruction"
|
| https://www.valoya.com/the-effect-of-led-grow-lights-on-
| huma...
| asteroidbelt wrote:
| Power waste is not an issue even in summer. Power production is
| driven by demand. Turn on more lights, and electricity
| companies will produce more electricity, and eventually they
| will make it cheap. Turn off the lights, and they'll do nothing
| because there's no demand.
|
| That was my pitch for nuclear power.
| seanhunter wrote:
| It's much more complex than that because power supply is not
| perfectly elastic. Power companies have to commit ahead of
| time to a certain level of production. In that sense power
| production is driven by _projected_ demand.
|
| Power waste is an issue - at times where there is oversupply,
| wholesale power prices can actually go negative and at that
| point there is an excess of power in the network which cannot
| be stored and if it's not consumed will lead to electrical
| damage. So people actually get paid to waste power. Ever seen
| a sports stadium with all the lights blazing late at night
| even though noone is there? They are one of the groups who
| take advantage of negative power prices. There are also
| places where there are literally resistors placed along the
| ground to sink excess electricity (as heat) into the earth
| during these times.
|
| When you say "eventually they will make it cheap" that seems
| likely to be a misconception also. Power production is not
| like manufacturing. Although innovation can lead to increases
| in efficiency and therefore reduced cost, inefficiency is not
| the limiting factor on power cost.
| asteroidbelt wrote:
| I would reply, but since those angry warriors downvoted my
| very reasonable comment, I should not.
|
| Perhaps I should stop trying to talk on hacker news at all.
| traceroute66 wrote:
| > Someone should probably start a bright home lighting company
|
| Such a thing already exists. Its called a lighting design
| company.
|
| People need to admit that lighting (like cryptography) is hard,
| and that if you're serious about "doing it right" you need to
| bring in a suitably skilled professional.
|
| Each house/apartment is different and every room within it is
| different, you'll never be able to magically buy good lighting
| out of the box to be installed on a plug and play basis.
|
| So if you are already undergoing the expense of a full-refurb and
| are serious about getting the lighting right, then really you
| should throw a few coins in the direction of a lighting
| professional.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| There are loads of products on the market that are intended to
| deliver short bursts of light to you. Usually they are marketed
| under the name "bright light" or "daylight" lamp. The point
| with light is that the intensity drops quadratic with distance.
| So, most of these solutions are intended to be used close to
| your face. The further away they are from you, the more energy
| you need. So, a wall or ceiling mounted solution is more
| costly.
|
| I used to live in Finland where the winters are dark and long
| and lots of my colleagues had these in their offices. The first
| time I saw one (a Philipps bright light), I thought it was some
| kind of fancy new Apple device I did not know yet. Until they
| turned it on. Highly effective apparently in countering winter
| depression, which is a common thing that far North.
|
| Basically you use them for 30 minutes or so in the morning. You
| actually need to be careful with this as you can damage your
| eyes. I checked on Amazon and you can get loads of different
| products in this category for under 50 euro or pay a premium
| for something bigger/fancier. E.g. Beurer has an ipad sized 10K
| lux solution: https://www.amazon.de/-/en/daylight-simulation-
| intensity-dis.... I can't vouch for any of these products since
| I don't need or use them though.
|
| Personally, I prefer to just take a walk when my calendar
| permits. It's good for multiple reasons and also re-energizes
| me while lowering stress. Just a 45 minute stroll does wonders;
| I do longer walks when time permits as well. I live in Germany
| these days so, it's less dark in the winter here and it did not
| really affect me that much even when I was living in Finland. I
| noticed my colleagues from further south were suffering a lot
| more; or at least moaning more about it.
| samstave wrote:
| Can confirm. Have worked on so many extremely large scale
| construction projects, on the tech side, and I see all the
| lighting plans during the design process...
|
| And I am always dumbfounded when I see the actual results. Even
| back when software available today, Blender, Sketchup and other
| design software did not exist ; lighting designers were REALLY
| good at coming up with nice lighting designs...
|
| Now with the advent of these tools, lighting design today is
| lightyears from where it was a decade ago - but its still HARD
| to do well.
| phgn wrote:
| I thought the same. For me the article is missing an
| explanation of _why_ existing artificial skylights cost $30k,
| and how to avoid those costs.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > For me the article is missing an explanation of why
| existing artificial skylights cost $30k, and how to avoid
| those costs.
|
| Because people with rare diseases are willing to pay _a lot_
| of money for stuff sold by snake-oil peddlers after they have
| been let down by the traditional healthcare system, and other
| than people with SAD there 's not much of a market for these
| things.
| lazide wrote:
| Having been a study of people for a long time? This impacts
| everyone, just some to bigger degrees. There is a reason
| Seattle is such a huge coffee (and antidepressant)
| consumer, and it isn't because these impacts are rare.
|
| They're just ignored because no one has figured out how to
| solve it (or that it is a problem for them).
| sacrosancty wrote:
| People already spend thousands of dollars on skylights without
| any professional lighting design, yet they pay a professional
| draughtsman to design it specially for their house, council to
| approve it, and licensed tradesman to build it. I don't get why
| they don't spend those same thousands on what you suggest or an
| off-the-shelf product that an electrician (or DIY) can install.
| conductr wrote:
| I went this route on a home renovation and it was worth every
| penny. I'm overly picky about lighting in general. Temperature,
| direction, intensity, and especially shadows. I was recently at
| a friends house that did a remodel and while plating my food in
| their kitchen my own shadow was cast on my plate and the food
| in front of me on their countertop. I felt so odd like a mild
| inconvenience I forgot existed. I told him jokingly he needs a
| refund from his contractor.
| GatorD42 wrote:
| I think circadian lighting will take off soon - something like
| Phillips Hue but cheaper, simpler, and much brighter bulbs (for
| simulating daylight). Set and forget for bright morning / day and
| dim amber at night with simple physical controls for overrides
| (if you're having a late night party or something).
| shiftpgdn wrote:
| Phillips makes a bulb that "yellows" based on how dim or bright
| the bulb is. I use these plus Luetron smart dimmers to
| automatically remove blue color temperatures from my house
| after sunset.
| wutXthreex3 wrote:
| fouronnes3 wrote:
| I'm wondering if there are any thermal management issues to
| anticipate, especially if you wanna build a safe commercial
| product. It's quite known that the limit to LED brightness
| rapidly becomes heat management, either of the power supply or
| the LED itself.
| orbital-decay wrote:
| In LED lighting space, insufficient heat dissipation is
| commonly used for planned obsolescence. LED lifetime directly
| depends on temperature, and most light sources are way too
| powerful for their heat dissipation capabilities.
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| There are in fact LED bulbs that aren't overdriven to a
| deliberate and premature thermal death, but you can only buy
| them in Dubai: https://youtu.be/klaJqofCsu4
|
| Lightbulbs have a long and very successful history of
| artificially driving lightbulb lifetimes down though a cartel
| system: https://youtu.be/j5v8D-alAKE
|
| If you're building your own LED fixtures, you can probably
| underdrive the LEDs and run them at a radically cooler and
| slightly more efficient operating point, at a higher upfront
| cost: you need more LEDs for the same output.
| genericacct wrote:
| Quite an interesting topic. What would be a good software setup
| in order to measure LED characteristics (or at least compare
| them)? I'd like to compare different lights' output power and
| spectrum using a simple phone camera.
| paxys wrote:
| https://www.day-lite.com/ already exists, for a lot cheaper than
| the author's estimates (no one is paying $1000+ for some bright
| bulbs).
|
| Here's some more:
|
| https://www.superbrightleds.com/moreinfo/decorative-ceiling-....
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Artika-Residential-Ultra-Thin-Dimmabl...
| stevage wrote:
| One of the products that day-lite.com sells "was $949" so it's
| almost true. :)
| pharke wrote:
| Those sub $1000 options from daylite don't look very bright,
| despite the reviews they have very few images that show what
| they look like in a room and the ones they do have look like a
| regular LED panel stuck on the wall. I doubt this comes
| anywhere close to simulating real daylight. It looks like
| they're just supposed to be a fake window that gives off a
| little light. Maybe their fake skylights are better, I can't
| find anything other than a single image. Not even an option to
| buy one.
| Someone wrote:
| > no one is paying $1000+ for some bright bulbs
|
| That $30k Coelux thing they mention is quite a bit more than
| "some bright bulbs". Their lighting casts sharp shadows. If you
| look into it, you see a bright sky with an image of the sun (ht
| tps://www.cepro.com/news/coelux_the_40000_fake_skylight_ev...)
|
| I think rich people will easily pay that for such a thing.
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