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Rooms can be as bright as the outdoors

benkuhn.net

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Re: Rooms can be as bright as the outdoors

#151
post #140
post #134

(Michael from f.lux): this kind of thing is necessary for most buildings, because otherwise people don't get a "day" signal when they spend time indoors. Most of us spend >90% of our time inside. However, we shouldn't mess with light levels like these (or even somewhat lower ones) without some limits, and the main one is some automatic timing to turn things down after it gets too late. Otherwise you will find yoursel…

> cancer progresses much faster in summer than in winter This sounds fascinating. Do you have a source? Btw, I love f.lux and have been using it since probably like 2010, possibly earlier. Its basically the first thing I install on any computer.

I made a note about Blask's 2005 work below, which is the main work I was thinking about. We can say that constant light is bad for cancer.

But as I'm refreshing my memory, winter can cut both ways. For some, it makes more darkness and more melatonin (which is thought to be protective of cancer). For others, winter results in not seeing enough light, and so melatonin amplitude goes down. And so this is associated with increased cancer.

Re: Rooms can be as bright as the outdoors

#152
post #130

> But as of recently, it’s totally practical to fill your entire house with light that’s as bright as full daylight. If you actually get your house as bright as sunlight, that means you have ~1kW / m2 of light in your house, which is impractical no matter how cheap and efficient LEDs get.

It's 445W/m^2. More than half of these 1kW is infrared.

Re: Rooms can be as bright as the outdoors

#153
post #117
post #51

I usually eschew labels, preferring simply "sleep weirdo", but I fit the pattern of "Non-24 Sleep-Wake Disorder", with my sleep and waking times drifting progressively later at semi-regular intervals. The result is that I'm often awake through the night. (This week I'm going to bed around 9:00 a.m.) Even with that, I've noticed some pretty big productivity swings based on the season. Interestingly, this hit me very h…

> I fit the pattern of "Non-24 Sleep-Wake Disorder", with my sleep and waking times drifting progressively later at semi-regular intervals. This is a disorder now? I thought that's just how humans worked. It's how I work, anyway - if nothing else (like work, or children waking up at 5:30am) forces me to get up at a set time, I'll slowly cycle through until I'm going to bed at sun-up and waking up at 3pm.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circadian_rhythm_sleep_disorde... that affects about 3% of the population.

Re: Rooms can be as bright as the outdoors

#155
post #134

(Michael from f.lux): this kind of thing is necessary for most buildings, because otherwise people don't get a "day" signal when they spend time indoors. Most of us spend >90% of our time inside. However, we shouldn't mess with light levels like these (or even somewhat lower ones) without some limits, and the main one is some automatic timing to turn things down after it gets too late. Otherwise you will find yoursel…

Have you considered manufacturing f.lux for home lighting, such as a wall-mounted controller for Hue or Ikea bulbs that changes color spectrum depending on time of day? Or possibly bulbs with f.lux build in, so no external controller is required?

Re: Rooms can be as bright as the outdoors

#156
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you provide specs on this system and clarification on how much use you believe was too much?

It was tens of thousands of lumens, directly next to computer for at least 8 hours a day. Beat the depression, drove me mad.

That sounds delicious

Re: Rooms can be as bright as the outdoors

#157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I absolutely hate LEDs. I don't know why, but I just hate them. Especially the white ones. The yellower are similar to a mid summer day and I can cope with them, but there's always this feeling of something being off. I guess it's connected to us humans being used to non-sun light being (similar to) a fire - mainly consisting of yellow/orange tones. Also, I don't exactly remember from where I read this, but when a (t…

It might be the flicker. Most LED lights I've found have pretty bad flicker: https://youtu.be/eWut5Qx6mkM?t=285 Phones are pretty bad too. Check out the Nexus 5x vs Pixel 3: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1f7-ChF4zFiisFdmEZVEz... I found that Phillips non dimmable bulbs are the cheap and don't flicker.

Same experience here. I film all the led bulbs I purchase in 240fps to see if they flicker at 60Hz. I discovered that Philips bulbs NEVER flicker. Occasionally I stumble upon other cheaper brands that don't flicker, but there is never any guarantee. I might buy 2 batches 6 months apart of bulbs from the same model from the same third party seller on Amazon, and they slightly changed the product (updated packaging and markings on the bulb) and one batch doesn't flicker whereas the other does... So I end up nowadays just buying Philips.

Re: Rooms can be as bright as the outdoors

#158
> Isn’t using this much power bad for the planet? Coal has a carbon intensity of about 1 kg CO2e / kWh (source), so one coal-powered lamp-day produces 2 kg, approximately one-third to one-half of a cheeseburger (source).

I don't think the author gets a cheeseburger everyday! And even if it is true, it adds on top of the cheeseburger.

Re: Rooms can be as bright as the outdoors

#159
post #105

Anyone knows a decent and inexpensive way to measure CRI? It seems like a simple enough problem with a prism and a monochrome CCD sensor, yet the cheapest device I can find is over a thousand dollars.

I wonder if it would be possible to write an app that could do it using the camera in a smart phone? The idea is that you would take some photos of some reference objects of known color under sunlight, and then take photos of those same objects under the lighting you are testing, and then figure out from the differences in the photos what the CRI must be.

The reference objects could be well known, easy to obtain household items, like a Pepsi can, a plastic bottle of Tide detergent, or box of Arm & Hammer baking soda. If the app included a reasonably good sized database of such items, there would be a good chance an average user would have a suitable set of color references already on hand.

Re: Rooms can be as bright as the outdoors

#160
post #155
post #134

(Michael from f.lux): this kind of thing is necessary for most buildings, because otherwise people don't get a "day" signal when they spend time indoors. Most of us spend >90% of our time inside. However, we shouldn't mess with light levels like these (or even somewhat lower ones) without some limits, and the main one is some automatic timing to turn things down after it gets too late. Otherwise you will find yoursel…

Have you considered manufacturing f.lux for home lighting, such as a wall-mounted controller for Hue or Ikea bulbs that changes color spectrum depending on time of day? Or possibly bulbs with f.lux build in, so no external controller is required?

Yes, we were looking at this quite a while ago. Lighting is a really hard business (especially residential) so we did not make the leap, and mainly have tried so far to work with people who are in that business.

We thought back then that some form of "smart lighting" would be universal. This mostly hasn't happened, so the truth is that the opportunity is different than we had guessed. Today most "smart" replacement lamps are $20+, similar to several years ago, even though normal lamps are $1.

We do support a lot of integrations with f.lux on Windows, so people can use f.lux with their Hue/LIFX/yeelight/etc., but it is somewhere <2% of our users right now.

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