Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I tried making artificial sunlight at home

victorpoughon.fr

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 243 posts

Re: I tried making artificial sunlight at home

#31

Post by J_Shelby_J »

astrange wrote: post #5
NotGMan wrote: post #2

Those in dark winter places can check this out for a home bright light setup. Some people report much better mood in dark winter days: https://meaningness.com/sad-light-led-lux https://meaningness.com/sad-light-lumens Buy a cheap lux meter if you will be doing this since otherwise you are flying blind.

This definitely helps for me, but it's hard to place the lights without glare, since they can't be anywhere that's ever directly in your vision! I'm also a little worried it's going to burn the houseplant near it. But it was a big change; my Silicon Valley apartment has little overhead lighting, and I mostly use Hue lights which just don't get very bright, so it turned out I'd accidentally built a depression cave in…

The 1600 lumen bulbs are worth it - if they fit your fixtures.

Still nowhere near as bright as a window on a cloudy day though.

Re: I tried making artificial sunlight at home

#32

Post by fouronnes3 »

petsfed wrote: post #27

Is there a reason why you went with traces rather than pours? I count 7 signals per board, and they're all meant to be low impedance. You could even expose copper on the back of the board to be used as ad hoc heat sinks without spending any extra money. The weird little triangle loops on the back really stand out to me, even though you probably don't need to worry about the impacts of a loop in your circuit.

Thanks for the feedback. Everything I know about PCB design is self-taught. I'm a total beginner, so I'm sure there's a lot to improve!

There's only 2 routes per board, VCC and GND. I initially planned for SMD header pins that I didn't end up using, because soldering wire on bare pads was good enough. I also planned for 8 connection pads per PCB, but only used 2 to 4 in the final assembly. So yeah, lots of room for improvements in the PCB design! Definitely would need to spend some time on it for a higher power version 2.

Re: I tried making artificial sunlight at home

#33

Post by fouronnes3 »

null_name wrote: post #30

Really neat, thank you for posting. I took a different angle when trying to figure this out - my goals were high spectral similarity to the sun, high brightness, adjustable warmth, and low cost. The existing lower-cost solutions people have posted about end up with high brightness, but the lights are evil. I ended up with a photography light that's /alright/. It's not nearly as bright as I want, and I can't automate…

Thanks! Feel free to reach out, I love to chat about this stuff. Contact info is on my website.

Re: I tried making artificial sunlight at home

#34

Post by sheepscreek »

jclarkcom wrote: post #19

Very cool. I’m the CEO of Innerscene ( https://innerscene.com ) and we make a commercial artificial skylight that uses some of these concepts. Actually the coelux ht25 model is almost identical to what you made but using smaller lenses and more LEDs - however the effect they were able to achieve still isn’t that great, the sun looks like a giant orb and once you get a few feet away you can make out a sun at all. We s…

“Virtual Sun” looks really cool. How much does one cost today? Say if someone wanted to buy a single piece or a few (2-3).

Re: I tried making artificial sunlight at home

#35

Post by Const-me »

brcmthrowaway wrote: post #25
Const-me wrote: post #23

> the main thermal issue when scaling up would be the cooling of the power supply itself, not of the lamp If I would be scaling up that device, I would consider an ATX power supply. These are relatively large and typically include an active cooler inside, but they can easily supply hundreds of watts at 12V, often have an on/off switch on the back, are relatively inexpensive (at least unless you need much more than 50…

Could you wire them in parallel for more watts

Personally, I would avoid it if possible. Even if they are of the same model, small discrepancies may cause their +12V to be slightly different. At the very least, will cause very non-uniform load distribution.

Luckily, seems the OP only needs one. The current light only uses 36W @ 12V, even if they make the new light 10x more powerful, a single 400W PSU should do the job nicely.

Re: I tried making artificial sunlight at home

#36

Post by klysm »

jclarkcom wrote: post #19

Very cool. I’m the CEO of Innerscene ( https://innerscene.com ) and we make a commercial artificial skylight that uses some of these concepts. Actually the coelux ht25 model is almost identical to what you made but using smaller lenses and more LEDs - however the effect they were able to achieve still isn’t that great, the sun looks like a giant orb and once you get a few feet away you can make out a sun at all. We s…

How do you guys go about doing sheet metal design? It looks pretty clean

Re: I tried making artificial sunlight at home

#37

Post by jclarkcom »

fouronnes3 wrote: post #21
jclarkcom wrote: post #19

Very cool. I’m the CEO of Innerscene ( https://innerscene.com ) and we make a commercial artificial skylight that uses some of these concepts. Actually the coelux ht25 model is almost identical to what you made but using smaller lenses and more LEDs - however the effect they were able to achieve still isn’t that great, the sun looks like a giant orb and once you get a few feet away you can make out a sun at all. We s…

Are you hiring? I'm looking for a job currently. Contact info is on my website :)

Let’s chat! Are you the article author?

Re: I tried making artificial sunlight at home

#40

Post by polygot »

Very cool! I'd be curious to see an HDR version of it using bracketed exposures--it might give a better sense of how it actually looks in person. It seems really bright in the photos, so the shortest exposure would probably need to be very low to capture a good dynamic range for the HDR.
Post reply on HN