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

191–200 of 243 posts

Re: I tried making artificial sunlight at home

#191

Post by jclarkcom »

dwighttk wrote: post #187
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…

That’s kinda cool… is it possible to match the weather instead of “infinite blue skies” though? I have real skylights on one side of my house and would love to put these up on the other but it would be weird to have sunny skies mixed with cloudy

Yes! We just announced and demoed a sensor that does just this at LEDucation last week and will be shipping before the end be of the year. It’s called SkySync

Re: I tried making artificial sunlight at home

#193

Post by mr_toad »

softgrow wrote: post #115

I built a very bright light source using a lamp stand from Ikea and the brightest, narrowest beam LED reflector I could find from my big box hardware store. The project works and gave about 10,000 lux but had a few drawbacks. After reading a book for a while a got a headache. The slightest imperfection (read dirt) in the arms of the armchair becomes super obvious. When I look at my right arm holding the book, it's so…

Sunlight can be 3-10 times that bright. No wonder the outdoors looks so dirty.

Re: I tried making artificial sunlight at home

#195

Post by rbanffy »

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…

I was thinking of building my own, but you might have saved me from that. I couldn't find pricing for the modules on the website, but, if possible, I'd love to discuss this. My e-mail is easily findable on my profile. Also, there are no agents in Ireland.

Re: I tried making artificial sunlight at home

#197

Post by Nelkins »

jclarkcom wrote: post #107
nmarinov wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi, I couldn't figure it out on your site but on the picture where you have your hand under the virtual sun[1], do you feel the warmth of the "sun" on your hand as you'd feel it with the real sun? [1] - https://www.innerscene.com/_next/image?url=%2F_next%2Fstatic...

No, there is no IR to speak of, however a lot of people tell us they feel warmer when they stand under it - just a psychological effect but interesting to observe

Would you ever consider making a product that emits some level of IR? Or even a very small amount of UV? Would be amazing for the winter months, even if it was just a very small amount.

Re: I tried making artificial sunlight at home

#198

Post by jannyfer »

softgrow wrote: post #115

I built a very bright light source using a lamp stand from Ikea and the brightest, narrowest beam LED reflector I could find from my big box hardware store. The project works and gave about 10,000 lux but had a few drawbacks. After reading a book for a while a got a headache. The slightest imperfection (read dirt) in the arms of the armchair becomes super obvious. When I look at my right arm holding the book, it's so…

The headache could have been from LED flicker. I bought a corn cob LED bulb and it had some high frequency flicker that was visible when using a camera with no anti-flicker compensation.

Re: I tried making artificial sunlight at home

#199

Post by jclarkcom »

ajolly wrote: post #147
jclarkcom wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah - channels can be a pain, reach out to me directly if you run into issues: Jonathan @ Innerscene

Super interesting! Any idea how you guys compare with https://getchroma.co/products/skylight ? I love the idea of high quality lighting inside especially for my Chicago place.

its tricky to compare because ours are designed to be integrated into a space and create the appearance of window with a big focus on high CCTs (2200k-40,000k) which relocates the color and spectrum of a blue sky using up to 180W. This lamp seems to be focused on lower CCTs (1800k-5000k) at high powers (750w is a lot of heat to dissipate). Both have similar Rf and CRI but we maintain great Rg and CRI across the whole range.

The one you linked is a stand alone lamp and they seem to focus on red light which I don’t quite understand. Red light (or very low CCTs) is used for skin therapy but typically requires direct exposure to the skin because irradiance levels need to be super high for that - from my understanding you wouldn’t have any benefit from a red lamp even at 750w. But blue light does can have lots of health benefits at low levels (search for ipRGCs).

Re: I tried making artificial sunlight at home

#200

Post by matheweis »

jclarkcom wrote: post #105
reaperman wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm very impressed that Innerscene provides LM-63 data for your artificial skylights. Is there any chance you'd be open to providing Spectral Similarity Index scores for your skylight? I think it would really differentiate your product and show how much your company cares about quality.

We provide full 1nm resolution SPDs in our download section so you can do any kind of calculations you want. Worth noting the SPDs change a lot depending on the color temperature of the light. In terms of similarity, trying to match sunlight exactly is not ideal because UV is bad for you and IR is a lot of water energy that can be produced in other ways more efficiently. For energy efficiency we focus on the spectrum…

I have a bunch of related questions so I will drop them all here:

* You mentioned focusing the spectrum on humans, but I have always wanted to have light that works well for both humans and plants (e.g. houseplants) as they are also beneficial for human spaces. Why not do both?

* Exposure to near IR has significant health benefits and seems like it should be included in an ideal lighting fixture that attempts to replicate the sun: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9855677/

What do you mean when you say IR can be produced in other ways more efficiently?

* How does your product compare with the Yuji Skyline?

Post reply on HN