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.
Someone should probably start a bright home lighting company (2019)
201–210 of 294 posts
Re: Someone should probably start a bright home lighting company (2019)
#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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.
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.
Re: Someone should probably start a bright home lighting company (2019)
#203It'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…
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.
Re: Someone should probably start a bright home lighting company (2019)
#204No 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
Re: Someone should probably start a bright home lighting company (2019)
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
how long do these last? you seem to have made a huge capital investment here
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 25°C ambient
Re: Someone should probably start a bright home lighting company (2019)
#206Unsurprisingly, 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."
Re: Someone should probably start a bright home lighting company (2019)
#207DIY 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…
He also created a version that simulates sunlight: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bqBsHSwPgw
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.
Re: Someone should probably start a bright home lighting company (2019)
#208We 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…
> 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.
Re: Someone should probably start a bright home lighting company (2019)
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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.
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.
Re: Someone should probably start a bright home lighting company (2019)
#210I 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…
"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…
Can you share a link / the name of the product?