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How to improve your WFH lighting to reduce eye strain

rustle.ca

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Re: How to improve your WFH lighting to reduce eye strain

#251

Post by ssl-3 »

gehwartzen wrote: post #132
toddmorey wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the history of LED lighting, it took quite a bit of work (hybrid phosphor technology, etc) to get them to emit warm color temperatures. The exact color temp can be a personal preference, but I think a lot of people aren't privy to the difference the color temperature of "white" light can make! I want to go on a guerrilla campaign around my neighborhood and replace porch light bulbs with warm equivalents.

I just went through this with my car. All the OEM overhead interior lights were horrible 6000k+ type bulbs that not only made the interior feel like a hospital room but completely ruined my night vision turning me into the classic “Jesus!! You’re going to kill someone!” dad whenever my kids would fiddle with them at night. I cannot overstate how much of a difference it made switching them all to 3000k warm whites. Of…

I've become somewhat expert at identifying cheap prefabulated automotive LED modules on AliExpress that seem unlikely to be problematic, and modifying them to be something other than awful and stupid.

It seems like such needless work. All I want are ~3000k LED widgets in various standard-automotive sizes that aren't stupid.

What I get are ~3000k LED widgets that are overdriven and painful to be around at night, which also have extra "CANBUS" resistors that only serve as heaters.

It's all pretty repulsive. Some recentl examples I got consumed 2.6 Watts, and about half of that was deliberately wasted as nothing but heat.

(2.6 Watts is quite a lot for a little LED board to dissipate, which results in early failures and flickering and other nonsense.)

But with the stupid heater-resistors removed, that dropped to only an eye-burning 1.3 Watts.

With the current-limiting resistor swapped to a higher value, power consumption was reduced to a few hundred mW and the light output approximated the relatively-unintrusive incandescent lamp that was originally fitted.

And finally, after all of that work of finding and modding the things, I can open the car door at night without becoming blind -- just like it was the 1990s again -- and also preserve the battery for things like starting the engine.

Re: How to improve your WFH lighting to reduce eye strain

#252

Post by gsck »

amarcheschi wrote: post #102
toddmorey wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the history of LED lighting, it took quite a bit of work (hybrid phosphor technology, etc) to get them to emit warm color temperatures. The exact color temp can be a personal preference, but I think a lot of people aren't privy to the difference the color temperature of "white" light can make! I want to go on a guerrilla campaign around my neighborhood and replace porch light bulbs with warm equivalents.

Along light temperature there's light cri as well, which measures how faithful to real life a light is. New standards such as Tm30 came out recently as well

CRI is usually only reported on professional grade lamps (Theatre, Film/TV) you'll almost never find it reported on anything below that.

Re: How to improve your WFH lighting to reduce eye strain

#255

Post by devenson »

hirvi74 wrote: post #247
Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're an exception. For most people, sitting in the dark with only their monitor giving off light massively increases eye-strain.

I do not wear eye glasses nor contacts, so I wonder if this is a difference maker? I have noticed people who wear either tend to complain about eye-strain more in general.

When I was younger, dark room, dark screen was fine. Gets harder to focus as you age. Bright screen and room cause smaller pupils and therefore easier focusing like a pinhole camera.

Re: How to improve your WFH lighting to reduce eye strain

#256

Post by xdennis »

toddmorey wrote: post #46
michaelteter wrote: post #2

This is another +1 for WFH. Many office environments have terrible lighting, and there's very little you can do about it.

I remember standing up on office chairs to twist the florescent tube bulbs above my desk just enough to turn them off. That light was just awful. It helped a lot until maintenance would come in at night and "fix" the light and I'd have to do it all over.

Could be worse. I worked in an old building in London which I think used to be a warehouse. It was renovated but the lighting was very low and they said they couldn't install stronger diffused lighting because of the local code. They eventually added hanging spotlights. Very bright and very narrow. But they would always end up shining right into someone's eyes. Every once in a while someone got annoyed by one and would rotate it in some other direction, only to piss someone else off.

Re: How to improve your WFH lighting to reduce eye strain

#257

Post by tonymet »

Havoc wrote: post #220
tonymet wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in theory all the switching dc supplies will be operating on the same AC cycle thus the same led frequency

No the output differs dramatically depending on quality of the supply. Simple example to illustrate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r715nLvwWvE

yes but the frequency is in the same phase . e.g. if you hook up 6 lights to a high quality supply, they will oscillate in sync

Re: How to improve your WFH lighting to reduce eye strain

#258

Post by 01100011 »

rusty-ux wrote: post #108
01100011 wrote: post #100

I am sensitive to bad CRI and color temp(3100K FTW). I really like the cheap "torchiere", floor lamp/uplights on Amazon but am finally giving up on them due to issues with poor CRI. I find standard screw-in LEDs from Philips to be the best, easily available source of light.

Amen. Honestly the IKEA lamps are the best - super cheap and you can swap out the bulbs with high quality dimmable philips. What torchiers are you swapping to?

I hate that ikea uses the smaller sockets for so many of their lamps.

I'm still shopping for floor lamps. Too many of them come with a reading light which I don't want .

Re: How to improve your WFH lighting to reduce eye strain

#259

Post by wyager »

wonger_ wrote: post #71
wyager wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While the color temperature situation has improved, the actual spectral quality of most consumer LED lighting still leaves a lot to be desired. CRI makes an effort to measure this, although it's a low-granularity measurement. I personally buy surplus cinema lighting equipment and use it to light my house. I have a bunch of fancy cinematic LEDs with high CRIs that produce decent light, although they still can't fully…

Where do you buy the surplus cinema lighting equipment? And how do you mount it inside your house? I went down a high CRI office lighting rabbit hole last year and I could only find expensive, new photography lights.

Craigslist. I just have a bunch of alerts for various cinema lighting brands (among other industrial goods I like using in my house, like pelican cases).

For mounting, it depends. Some things, like Pavotubes, come with screw-in mounting solutions. Other stuff may require dedicated photo mounting hardware. Manfrotto Superclamps and similar are a great way to mount lights to random pipes, beams, etc.

Also, most cinema lighting supports DMX control, which is nice for automation. It's harder to set up than Zigbee, but it works a lot better once you get it set up. That bit is definitely not consumer-friendly though.

Re: How to improve your WFH lighting to reduce eye strain

#260

Post by wyager »

toddmorey wrote: post #121
wyager wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While the color temperature situation has improved, the actual spectral quality of most consumer LED lighting still leaves a lot to be desired. CRI makes an effort to measure this, although it's a low-granularity measurement. I personally buy surplus cinema lighting equipment and use it to light my house. I have a bunch of fancy cinematic LEDs with high CRIs that produce decent light, although they still can't fully…

using surplus cinema lighting equipment is genius.

If you're patient, it's crazy how much money you can save off of new pricing. I frequently see discounts north of 75% off new price for stuff in pretty good condition.
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