61–70 of 232 posts
I agree with this 100%. When we bought our house 5 years ago I bought some hue bulbs as a luxury purchase along with one Sonos speaker. Figured I was spending 200 grand on a house so may as well pay a few hundred dollars worth of toys. Fast forward 5 years and the whole house is automated (and not through the cloud) but the ability to change moods with lights (and lights with moods) and especially have non-white ligh…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 just want some lights that expose a simple API and are easy to talk to. I want smart lights that will work when the internet is down and doesn't need an app to connect to.
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B07VQLZBNW/ref=ppx_yo_dt...
The MagicLight app works pretty well, doesn't require cloud (though they will try and get you to sign up) and you can automate through home assistant or look at the API yourself.
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…
I agree with this 100%. When we bought our house 5 years ago I bought some hue bulbs as a luxury purchase along with one Sonos speaker. Figured I was spending 200 grand on a house so may as well pay a few hundred dollars worth of toys. Fast forward 5 years and the whole house is automated (and not through the cloud) but the ability to change moods with lights (and lights with moods) and especially have non-white ligh…
What colors and moods do you use?
I would say that once you get over some initial shock about colored lights, sometimes it makes sense to have lights in room half brightness orange-yellows and sometimes it even is nice to have them deep blues and purples and some accent lights are always nice to have somewhat colorful because they are mostly providing ambience and decoration rather than light to do something with
Also moving away from overhead lighting and towards more lamps and wall lighting in rooms has also done wonders. Something about overhead bright lights feels unnatural once you don't have them
Which makes sense being that the only time that sort of light happens outside is at midday in the summer
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…
I'm not convinced about blackout curtains being healthy. Why is it that when you go camping you feel so refreshed and good when the sun comes up and wakes you up? Did our far ancestors use blackout curtains? How did they deal with the sun waking them up everyday? My guess is that it's the optimal way to wake up actually.
Lights are extremely powerful but people always seem to focus on only half the equation. Waking up to light is a million times better than waking up to sound. My lights dim and turn off around 9:30pm and turn on at 5:30 am and brighten until 6:00 am. I wake up without any grogginess at all. It's amazing.
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…
I'm not convinced about blackout curtains being healthy. Why is it that when you go camping you feel so refreshed and good when the sun comes up and wakes you up? Did our far ancestors use blackout curtains? How did they deal with the sun waking them up everyday? My guess is that it's the optimal way to wake up actually.
Because alcohol induces REM sleep?
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…
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.
Getting up to a modern DPI is a game changer right?