Investing in lighting did great things for my mental and physical health • Hacker News Board

Re: Investing in lighting did great things for my mental and physical health

#111

Post by smcleod » Sat, May 28, 2022, 4:42 AM UTC

Auracle wrote: post #96

smcleod wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely agree, fantastic lights and worth every penny, their CRI is high enough to fill out the visible light spectrum nicely - you don't get any "indoor greys" and they seem to last forever, several of my bulbs are over 10 years old and still working perfectly.

I put one up in my photo studio because I wanted some 6500k lights, and there’s no way it was actually white at 6500k. I forget what color it was tinged with but it was super obvious. I suspect they’re only high CRI at certain color temperatures?

Yeah that absolutely could be true, I only really switch between 2-3 different colours / temperatures.

Re: Investing in lighting did great things for my mental and physical health

#112

Post by devbent » Sat, May 28, 2022, 4:42 AM UTC

sumedh wrote: post #11

lawkwok wrote: post #7

Phillips Hue lights are something you think is a luxury until you get them. The ability to have light change colour temperature or dim depending on the time is so calming. Whenever I revert back to the non—colour-temperature-adjusted light, I feel like I’m in an operating room. The only thing I would note is that they are dimmer than regular lights. Having dim lights in the middle of the day really makes me sleepy.

Hue lights are not bright, if you want bright lights/color look at Lifx lights and can be controlled by Wifi.

Cree brand bulbs are also 100w equivalent and cheaper than hue.

Bit buggy though. :(

Re: Investing in lighting did great things for my mental and physical health

#113

Post by 29083011397778 » Sat, May 28, 2022, 4:49 AM UTC

bozhark wrote: post #9

MrAwesome wrote: post #6

It seems like there has been a lot of buzz lately about the importance of reducing light exposure at night and the impact it has on your health. I can certainly speak to it anecdotally - getting a nice pair of blackout curtains and putting electrical tape over the electronics LEDs in my bedroom seemed to do wonders for my sleep. A quick search for sources led me to this article, which has a nice collection of links t…

This makes me feel less crazy for the black electrical tape on all the LEDs.

The worst part is (IIRC) that blue LEDs are cheaper for the OEM, but worst in a dark room.

Re: Investing in lighting did great things for my mental and physical health

#114

Post by bradlys » Sat, May 28, 2022, 4:59 AM UTC

benreesman wrote: post #59

At the risk of sparking some kind of Apple flame war: I went to the optometrist recently and my vision had abruptly tanked, I have a much stronger prescription than a year ago. “Have you been pulling long screen hours?” “Yeah. Very long.” “Well that’s why.” “Outside of cutting screen hours, is there anything else I can do?” “Get the highest DPI display you can afford and crank up the font size. Won’t help much, but i…

How did you avoid your prescription increasing a lot for so many years? Did long screen hours also correlate with not going outside?

It's known that having less light exposure (e.g. going outside) correlates heavily with decreased eyesight.

Re: Investing in lighting did great things for my mental and physical health

#115

Post by enw » Sat, May 28, 2022, 5:02 AM UTC

lawkwok wrote: post #7

Phillips Hue lights are something you think is a luxury until you get them. The ability to have light change colour temperature or dim depending on the time is so calming. Whenever I revert back to the non—colour-temperature-adjusted light, I feel like I’m in an operating room. The only thing I would note is that they are dimmer than regular lights. Having dim lights in the middle of the day really makes me sleepy.

I hate to say it but there's no better advertisement than this on Hacker News.

Re: Investing in lighting did great things for my mental and physical health

#116

Post by shepherdjerred » Sat, May 28, 2022, 5:11 AM UTC

bubblethink wrote: post #25

lawkwok wrote: post #7

Phillips Hue lights are something you think is a luxury until you get them. The ability to have light change colour temperature or dim depending on the time is so calming. Whenever I revert back to the non—colour-temperature-adjusted light, I feel like I’m in an operating room. The only thing I would note is that they are dimmer than regular lights. Having dim lights in the middle of the day really makes me sleepy.

Is there any friendly alternative to these home automation things ? I would like to try some stuff but I don't want to spend a weekend creating vlans or fighting google play services, alexa etc.

I used Google Home for a while, but honestly it was a pretty bad experience as time went on.

I've used Home Assistant[0] for the last 8-9 months. It works great and has support for every device I used with Google Home. It also has bridges so that you can still use Alexa, Siri, or Google Assistant for voice commands if you want that. The mobile app is good enough. It isn't as user friendly as Google Home, but it's not terrible and way more powerful.

You can run it on your own hardware, e.g. a NAS or Raspberry Pi, and they also sell purpose made hardware[1]

[0]: https://www.home-assistant.io/

[1]: https://www.crowdsupply.com/nabu-casa/home-assistant-yellow

Re: Investing in lighting did great things for my mental and physical health

#117

Post by nostromo » Sat, May 28, 2022, 5:12 AM UTC

twelvechairs wrote: post #106

nostromo wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason those didn’t matter so much in the past is because traditional light bulbs are so damn good. Even today, as good as LEDs have gotten, their color rendering is still noticeably worse than incandescents. (The highest scores are around 80-90 CRI, an old-fashioned bulb is the standard at 100.) Trouble dimming smoothly, harsh blues, flickering, strobing, excessive glare… all of these weren’t a problem until CFL…

CFLs produce a far less natural spectrum than LEDs. See https://media.mercola.com/ImageServer/Public/2016/October/le...

Uh yeah? We’re talking about how incandescents have superior light. CFLs are worse than both LEDs and incandescents.

Re: Investing in lighting did great things for my mental and physical health

#118

Post by gtowey » Sat, May 28, 2022, 5:21 AM UTC

elabajaba wrote: post #103

sampo wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Philips Hue: You can use the phone app to control individual bulbs directly with bluetooth, but for more control you need also the Hue brigde, which talks to the bulbs over Zigbee (a wireless protocol), and to your phone app over your wifi. For initial setup, the bridge needs an internet connection, but otherwise it will work as long as your home wifi is up, even if there is no connection to outside internet. The fea…

As someone who had Lifx due to them not needing a controller, don't buy them their software sucks. It worked fine for months at a time, but would then decide it no longer wanted to obey commands and you'd have to re-pair it, which usually took 30 minutes and 5 failed attempts where it would fail during the setup process after resetting the bulb. Their bulbs also sometimes just ignored commands, so you'd have to just…

Interesting. I have lifx bulbs going back to the first generation Kickstarter products and I've never had one die yet. I use them daily.

From what I understand the number one cause of led bulb failures is heat, which causes things like capacitors to fail prematurely or poor connections to break from the repeated expansion.

All my bulbs are used in lamps or fixtures which are not enclosed which means they have plenty of ventilation.

Re: Investing in lighting did great things for my mental and physical health

#119

Post by elabajaba » Sat, May 28, 2022, 5:25 AM UTC

sampo wrote: post #108

elabajaba wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who had Lifx due to them not needing a controller, don't buy them their software sucks. It worked fine for months at a time, but would then decide it no longer wanted to obey commands and you'd have to re-pair it, which usually took 30 minutes and 5 failed attempts where it would fail during the setup process after resetting the bulb. Their bulbs also sometimes just ignored commands, so you'd have to just…

I understand the LIFX bulbs can be picky about the wifi connection. I think this explains most of the problems people have with them.

You'd think being in the same room as a Unifi UAP AC Pro in a non crowded area with a dedicated 2.4ghz ssid would fix those wifi issues, but it didn't.

Re: Investing in lighting did great things for my mental and physical health

#120

Post by ehnto » Sat, May 28, 2022, 5:28 AM UTC

benreesman wrote: post #70

d3nj4l wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A hard amen to this. I can't afford the 6K display, but getting a decent 4k one for $400 has more than paid for itself in reducing stress. I never noticed it, but my eyes were working overtime reading blurry text.

Even 4k is a huge step up from what I had been using which was just whatever. Getting up to a modern DPI is a game changer right?

Not to assume you play games or watch YouTube, but on low DPI you also don't realise what you are missing in detail. Entire objects reveal themselves in this new space between the pixels. Where once was a splodge is now a person far off into the distance. You could almost liken low DPI to being near sighted, which I also am. Once you hit higher DPI suddenly you can see the view far off into the distance clearly.

I have been messing with VR lately and that is a new dimension as well, similar in change to the jump to high DPI. Ignoring the stereoscopic part, you also don't realise the scale of things until they are in the correct FOV in front of you. I see now why simracing boffins faff about with FOV so much on their screens! I took the effort to calculate FOV for my desktop monitor and where I sit, and in FPS games and it made a huge difference to immersion.