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).
Someone should probably start a bright home lighting company (2019)
181–190 of 294 posts
Re: Someone should probably start a bright home lighting company (2019)
#182I 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).
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.
Re: Someone should probably start a bright home lighting company (2019)
#183I 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 sm…
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.
Re: Someone should probably start a bright home lighting company (2019)
#184We 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)
Re: Someone should probably start a bright home lighting company (2019)
#185So... 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.
Re: Someone should probably start a bright home lighting company (2019)
#186We 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…
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.
Re: Someone should probably start a bright home lighting company (2019)
#187Home 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
Re: Someone should probably start a bright home lighting company (2019)
#188Home 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…
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.
Re: Someone should probably start a bright home lighting company (2019)
#189This 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 bu…
'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.
Re: Someone should probably start a bright home lighting company (2019)
#190We 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…
> 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.