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Rooms can be as bright as the outdoors

benkuhn.net

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Re: Rooms can be as bright as the outdoors

#71

Post by muzani »

derefr wrote: post #65

> Other than “we’ve been doing it for a while,” there seems to be no reason to expect that being in a 100x dimmer environment all day wouldn’t be awful. Indoor darkness seems to be one of those things that we don’t question only because it’s been that way forever. An interesting question is: what average light levels existed in the Environment of Evolutionary Adaptedness for humans, given the types of things our ance…

It could be different for everyone. My ancestors likely grew up in dense equatorial jungles and caves, not plains. A lot of my family members perform much better in dim light. My optimal seems to be 2-7 PM on a rainy day.

Re: Rooms can be as bright as the outdoors

#73

Post by bitexploder »

gligorot wrote: post #68
wheels wrote: post #51

I usually eschew labels, preferring simply "sleep weirdo", but I fit the pattern of "Non-24 Sleep-Wake Disorder", with my sleep and waking times drifting progressively later at semi-regular intervals. The result is that I'm often awake through the night. (This week I'm going to bed around 9:00 a.m.) Even with that, I've noticed some pretty big productivity swings based on the season. Interestingly, this hit me very h…

I absolutely hate LEDs. I don't know why, but I just hate them. Especially the white ones. The yellower are similar to a mid summer day and I can cope with them, but there's always this feeling of something being off. I guess it's connected to us humans being used to non-sun light being (similar to) a fire - mainly consisting of yellow/orange tones. Also, I don't exactly remember from where I read this, but when a (t…

The flickering. It’s not nice.

Re: Rooms can be as bright as the outdoors

#74

Post by Mizza »

EdwardCoffin wrote: post #31
Mizza wrote: post #6

I'm extremely light sensitive, and so have built quite a few DIY solutions in order to alleviate my S-A-D symptoms. One of my systems may have been a bit over powered and over used, as I developed what a doctor friend later diagnosed as "light induced hypomania", which was quite an experience. Experiment at your own risk.

Could you provide specs on this system and clarification on how much use you believe was too much?

It was tens of thousands of lumens, directly next to computer for at least 8 hours a day. Beat the depression, drove me mad.

Re: Rooms can be as bright as the outdoors

#75

Post by wheels »

benkuhn wrote: post #63
wheels wrote: post #51

I usually eschew labels, preferring simply "sleep weirdo", but I fit the pattern of "Non-24 Sleep-Wake Disorder", with my sleep and waking times drifting progressively later at semi-regular intervals. The result is that I'm often awake through the night. (This week I'm going to bed around 9:00 a.m.) Even with that, I've noticed some pretty big productivity swings based on the season. Interestingly, this hit me very h…

Have you tried buying higher CRI LEDs? Halogens have very good color rendering compared to typical LEDs (100 vs ~80 for typical LEDs), but you can buy specialty bulbs with closer-to-natural spectra. I haven't dug much into off the shelf options, but one of my coworkers did and got excited about these lights: https://store.yujiintl.com/collections/high-cri-led-lights/p...

Hmm, that's sounds interesting and is at least an avenue to chase down. Sadly, next to my stockpile of halogen bulbs, I also basically have a lifetime supply of LEDs and CFLs that didn't pass muster. Maybe someday I'll have a really big garage that needs lighting. ;-)

The specific bulbs you linked to have a crazy high lumen rating, which appeals to me despite their high price.

I have noticed that name brand (and pricier) LEDs tend to do better for me. Some of the ones from e.g. Phillips and Osram put out a different quality of light (though it's still not up there with incandescents for me).

Re: Rooms can be as bright as the outdoors

#76

Post by ta0987 »

ZoomZoomZoom wrote: post #12

The poor CRI is really a dealbreaker for me. What I've done for my DIY "ghetto" photography lighting is I mixed 4 led strips of 2 temperatures from 2 different manufacturers. Much better, but still poor, to be frank.

I've been looking at this, but it's not cheap:

https://www.waveformlighting.com/high-cri-led-strip-lights

Re: Rooms can be as bright as the outdoors

#77

Post by ta0987 »

wheels wrote: post #75
benkuhn wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried buying higher CRI LEDs? Halogens have very good color rendering compared to typical LEDs (100 vs ~80 for typical LEDs), but you can buy specialty bulbs with closer-to-natural spectra. I haven't dug much into off the shelf options, but one of my coworkers did and got excited about these lights: https://store.yujiintl.com/collections/high-cri-led-lights/p...

Hmm, that's sounds interesting and is at least an avenue to chase down. Sadly, next to my stockpile of halogen bulbs, I also basically have a lifetime supply of LEDs and CFLs that didn't pass muster. Maybe someday I'll have a really big garage that needs lighting. ;-) The specific bulbs you linked to have a crazy high lumen rating, which appeals to me despite their high price. I have noticed that name brand (and pric…

There's also this company, but I haven't pulled the trigger myself because of the cost:

https://www.waveformlighting.com/high-cri-led-strip-lights

Re: Rooms can be as bright as the outdoors

#78

Post by wheels »

gligorot wrote: post #68
wheels wrote: post #51

I usually eschew labels, preferring simply "sleep weirdo", but I fit the pattern of "Non-24 Sleep-Wake Disorder", with my sleep and waking times drifting progressively later at semi-regular intervals. The result is that I'm often awake through the night. (This week I'm going to bed around 9:00 a.m.) Even with that, I've noticed some pretty big productivity swings based on the season. Interestingly, this hit me very h…

I absolutely hate LEDs. I don't know why, but I just hate them. Especially the white ones. The yellower are similar to a mid summer day and I can cope with them, but there's always this feeling of something being off. I guess it's connected to us humans being used to non-sun light being (similar to) a fire - mainly consisting of yellow/orange tones. Also, I don't exactly remember from where I read this, but when a (t…

> I absolutely hate LEDs. I don't know why, but...

I'm really interested in the why. Most people don't seem to care. My in-laws have CFLs in their living room that just feel horrible to me, but they're none the wiser. I'm very curious as to what it is in the light spectrum that seems to matter to some (small) class of people, myself, and it sounds like you, included.

The word for "fire-like" light, used in my original comment, is "black-body radiation". Stars, fire and incandescent bulbs put out a similarly shaped spectrum.

A few years ago there were scientists working on a black-body (i.e. incandescent) light bulb that reflected infrared emission back to heat the filament and re-emit as visible light making for a theoretically efficient incandescent bulb. I check every year or so to see if the research has been commercialized, but have always been disappointed:

https://www.dezeen.com/2016/01/13/mit-energy-efficient-incan...

Edit: Another point on the blueness of LEDs is that they seem to amplify macular degeneration, which has made my grandmother mostly blind, and I know based on gene sequencing that I have a more than 50% chance of developing. While most of my rejection of LEDs is based on them not looking nice to me, I am also worried about hurrying the onset of blindness in old age for persons like myself who carry the genes for macular degeneration:

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/05/16/health/blue-light-led-hea...

Re: Rooms can be as bright as the outdoors

#79

Post by taneq »

kazinator wrote: post #61
taneq wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and no. Motors pull a much higher current when they're starting up than when they're running, so your wall socket voltage is going to dip when you start a motor. That said, it shouldn't dip enough to be particularly noticeable, and if it is then that can point to a problem in your power supply or wiring.

It might not be noticeable, or as noticeable, with a 150W incandescent bulb, which has thermal inertia in the filament. What's going on here is that these are fast LEDs.

On the flip side, mains-voltage LEDs generally have built-in power supplies which should lead to them actually showing less dimming during brief voltage dips.

Re: Rooms can be as bright as the outdoors

#80

Post by honr »

wheels wrote: post #51

I usually eschew labels, preferring simply "sleep weirdo", but I fit the pattern of "Non-24 Sleep-Wake Disorder", with my sleep and waking times drifting progressively later at semi-regular intervals. The result is that I'm often awake through the night. (This week I'm going to bed around 9:00 a.m.) Even with that, I've noticed some pretty big productivity swings based on the season. Interestingly, this hit me very h…

I kept seeing the following problem with several different LED lights we were installing until I found one that was better: Take your phone and take a video of the lights when on (normal framerate should be enough, try slow-motion for further investing). Most lights I got from the local hardware store were flickering quite visibly. And I'm pretty sure it's a design insufficiency of the adaptor electronics attached to it, not the LEDs themselves. If I were to guess I'd say most of them probably go the simple path of cutting off the negative half of the AC cycle and feeding the rest directly, without a decent low-pass filter to the LEDs.

What worked reasonably well for me, was getting a normal DC power supply and a few LED strips (with fairly dense and higher power LEDs) and installed that in a room. That light feels pretty satisfying to me.

All that being said, I don't like anything even remotely close to daylight level ambience when I am working on a computer screen; the custom lighting I set up is for other living areas.

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