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Someone should probably start a bright home lighting company (2019)

lincolnquirk.com

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Re: Someone should probably start a bright home lighting company (2019)

#31

Post by sooheon »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #9

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…

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...

Re: Someone should probably start a bright home lighting company (2019)

#32

Post by astrange »

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.

Re: Someone should probably start a bright home lighting company (2019)

#33

Post by jaidan »

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.

Re: Someone should probably start a bright home lighting company (2019)

#34

Post by stingraycharles »

birken wrote: post #14

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…

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).

Re: Someone should probably start a bright home lighting company (2019)

#35

Post by unglaublich »

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.

Re: Someone should probably start a bright home lighting company (2019)

#37

Post by manmal »

leobg wrote: post #12

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…

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?

Re: Someone should probably start a bright home lighting company (2019)

#38

Post by adhesive_wombat »

orbital-decay wrote: post #13
fouronnes3 wrote: post #6

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.

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.

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.

Re: Someone should probably start a bright home lighting company (2019)

#39

Post by bonestamp2 »

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).

Re: Someone should probably start a bright home lighting company (2019)

#40

Post by Nition »

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.

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