9 ms·

You Need More Lumens

226 points by ivank 11y ago

keithpeter 11y ago
I live at 52.5 degrees North. Cosine to the power 4 being what it is, my neighbours and I could be experiencing significantly lower levels of daylight intensity in all seasons than people who live at lower latitudes. In the summer, we will see similar or slightly more daylight integrated over the duration of the day because of the longer days. The OA does not specify the latitude at which he(? assuming the OA is the site owner's work) is living.
- Tepix 11y ago
  Northern California is mentioned in the article.
  - keithpeter 11y ago
    Thanks - failed to pick that reference up.
- alkonaut 11y ago
  Try SAD at 64 North. No picnic. I'd really like to try s light but don't think I'd have the patience to sit in front of one long enough. If it could be made bright enough that you could have it overhead and work at the same time that would be brilliant.
  - ptaipale 11y ago
    I live at 60°N. Several colleagues at work simply keep a bright-light lamp on their desk, in the general direction of the window.
  - keithpeter 11y ago
    I don't have SAD (well, I don't notice any particular symptoms anyway). One can imagine that luminaires pointing at a light matt surface ceiling would produce an effect like cloudy daylight, but that might just be cosmetic - the science needs to be done I suppose.
  - marvin 11y ago
    I have one of these on my desk, right next to the monitor. Working in front of it for 30-60 minutes a day really helps. Live at 60.5 degrees north. Also take vitamin suppliments and exercise more in winter; it's hard to tell what causes the improvement. With a lamp like this, you don't have to do anything outside of your routine to get more light. You can keep it 20 centimeters (~1 foot) from your eyes, so reduced irradiance due to distance (as this article points out) is not a problem. http://www.usa.philips.com/c-p/HF3318_60/energylight http://www.usa.philips.com/c-p/HF3318_60/energylight
- dietrichepp 11y ago
  Cosine to the fourth power is the wrong formula, it is for camera lenses and takes into account the apparent size of the pupil from both sides, as well as distance attenuation for objects on a fixed plane. Solar illuminance is proportional just to the cosine, no power.
  - keithpeter 11y ago
    Thanks for pointing that out, and that is what I get for relying on memory. I did a bit of googling and found this... http://www.ccfg.org.uk/conferences/downloads/P_Burgess.pdf http://www.ccfg.org.uk/conferences/downloads/P_Burgess.pdf ... which looks relevant and interesting.
shin_lao 11y ago
I found the best to feel better during winter is to supplement my diet with D vitamins.
- manmal 11y ago
  While Vit D helps me, additionally using a 10k lamp is like night and day, if you forgive the pun.
- jbjorge 11y ago
  This was my experience as well. For two years I lived at a latitude where I got about zero daylight for 5-6 months per year. My SAD-lamp helped a little (<10k lumens), vitamin D helped a lot.
- Hugie 11y ago
  How much Vitamin D did you take? Did you measure/calc the amount per kg?
  - willsher 11y ago
    From research around the Internet, D3 is generally seen as safe (http://www.mayoclinic.org/drugs-supplements/vitamin-d/safety/hrb-20060400 http://www.mayoclinic.org/drugs-supplements/vitamin-d/safety... is pretty typical on the safety information) Personally I take a D3 supplement of 2000IU/day during the dark months (along with some other supplements due to a mostly vegan diet, some of which contain low D2/D3 amounts, so my actual supplemented intake is around 2400 IU).
- jp555 11y ago
  Vitamin D will help but it is not the only beneficial compound produced by our skin in the presence of sunlight. Strategic tanning bed/booth & Vitamin D supplementation works best imho. There seems to be attitional benefits to the sunlight induced vitamin D production, possibly related to the oxidation of cholesterol & sulphur as the cholesterol is converted into Vitamin D.
toomanybeersies 11y ago
Interesting that they're in Northern California and get Seasonal Affective Disorder. I live at a similar latitude (except in the Southern Hemisphere) and have never considered that it would be a thing outside of essentially polar latitudes. Over the past couple of winters (I moved further south a few years back) I've had some atrocious winters in terms of mental space. Maybe this is something I should look into.
- Symbiote 11y ago
  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20170049 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20170049 Seems to conclude latitude doesn't make any difference, which is surprising. But there are other papers with the opposite conclusion.
jensen123 11y ago
I live in Norway, and used to have a big problem with SAD and longer-than-24-hour-cycles. I tried a few of the commercial lamps like he did, and my experience was similar. They helped some, but not enough. My current solution is to take a 1 hour walk outside every day around noon. Also, I've stopped sitting in front of my computer or TV 3 hours within bedtime. Instead I usually spend my late evenings reading paper books. This has solved the longer-than-24-hour-cycles and most of the SAD (it also seems to have completely cleared up my acne). However, on days when it's overcast and kinda dark, I still notice some SAD. On those dark days, the kind of lamp that he built probably would have been nice.
- kwelstr 11y ago
  Probably in days that's too overcast a good serving of fatty fish will help. Vitamin d3 is either synthesized from sun exposure or supplemented through diet, it is a good mood regulator.
  - vardump 11y ago
    While both are related to lack of day light exposure in the winter time, lack of vitamin D production is another issue, probably not related to SAD. Regardless, a good reminder. Fish has also other health benefits. I'd still take some vitamin D supplement on top of that.
    - lunula 11y ago
      Obviously this is purely anecdotal. I have the same habits as the author with respect to light exposure regulation. I live in England and take an hour walk every day around noon regardless of weather. At night I avoid computers for about two hours before bedtime and although I do not read paper books (I should find my local library...) I set a screen filter on my amoled phablet and often invert the text so it shows white on black. I exclusively use a red LED at night for lighting. This all helps a lot, bit the thing that seems most striking is vitamin D. Sometimes I feel down and realize I haven't had exposure to many sources for a while. A few days of heavy doses and my mood improves. I don't take it orally all the time, just as I imagine I need it. The effect is sublte but it would be cool if someone could figure out how to quanitfy. As a result of all this care about light I haven't had a SAD winter for most of a decade. I feel "cured" of it enough that spending time in even more northerly places in the winter does not trigger unpleasant depression. That said, us northern peoples should slow down in the winter. Thousands of years of selection has driven this home, and it is nothing to be upset about. We will make up for the slowness of the winter in the long days of summer.
coderdude 11y ago
Feeling bad because it's winter? Yee-ikes. Plant problems. I can't believe it's actually called SAD. Luckily summer will be here again and we can all be STOKED.
kristiandupont 11y ago
I don't see any info about the spectrum produced by the bulbs he recommends. Color temperature is one thing, but that's equivalent to describing a chord with just the root key. I suspect that a spectrum as close to the sun as possible (including UV and IR) is better.
- dietrichepp 11y ago
  Any particular reason that you suspect that UV and IR are important, or is this just pure speculation?
  - kristiandupont 11y ago
    No, that's just speculation.
  - collyw 11y ago
    I took an interest in this a while ago after travelling a lot then coming back to Scotland. I seem to remember blue light being recommended. Moved to Barcelona and never really thought about it since.
- kristiandupont 11y ago
  Curious about the downvotes here. Is this a controversial view or something?
- enimodas 11y ago
  In the article she talks about CRI ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_rendering_index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_rendering_index ) which is similar
julianpye 11y ago
As a teen on weekends I worked a lot on filmsets as assistant to a lighting cameraman. Switching HMI lamps on was really amazing, the mood of the set changed in an instant. It was quite energetic, so I completely get what the author is saying. They usually were positioned outside of windows, allowing for a stable consistent sunlight simulation across scenes.
- vanderZwan 11y ago
  From the wiki article[0] on HMI lamps: > 85–108 lumens per watt of electricity. Sounds pretty good! > With HMI bulbs, color temperature varies significantly with lamp age. A new bulb generally will output at a color temperature close to 15,000 K during its first few hours. As the bulb ages, the color temperature reaches its nominal value of around 5600 K or 6000 K. With age, the arc length becomes larger as more of the electrodes burn away. This requires greater voltage to sustain the arc, and as voltage increases, color temperature decreases proportionately at a rate of approximately 0.5–1 kelvin for every hour burnt. For this reason, and other safety reasons, HMI bulbs are not recommended to be used past half their lifetime. Oh.. Then again, burn-in is something all lamps suffer from, right? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrargyrum_medium-arc_iodide_lamp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrargyrum_medium-arc_iodide_...
windsurfer 11y ago
This review for the linked led strip is interesting: This is a perfectly usable (and subjectively bright) LED strip, but beware, the specified lumens are a lie. My power meter reports a draw of 33W and another reviewer reports ~38.6W. The maximum efficiency of a 5730 SMD LED is ~110 lumens/watt, so this strip is outputting at most ~3630 lumens. Seller's description of "45-50LM" per LED would lead you to believe this can output 15000 lumens or ~454 lumens/watt. This is far outside the world record 200 lumens/watt bulbs and even outside the theoretical physical limit of 250–370 lm/W.
- ivank 11y ago
  I posted a little further investigation at http://meaningness.com/metablog/sad-light-lumens/comments#comment-774 http://meaningness.com/metablog/sad-light-lumens/comments#co... > http://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/51778/ http://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/51778/ suggests that these LED strips have to be overvolted and powered at multiple points, which might bring them closer to ~7000 lumens. > I'm also going to try comparing the hkbayi Super Bright to LEDMO's strip with 600 LEDs: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B013C2U09S/ http://www.amazon.com/dp/B013C2U09S/
  - jacquesm 11y ago
    I have on of those Super Bright led strips in the kitchen and it is actually too bright for direct lighting uses. You end up with afterimages for minutes on end after just glancing in their general direction. Would recommend you only use these for indirect lighting applications.
- koralatov 11y ago
  I've come across the same sort of exaggeration on eBay when I was buying LED bulbs a year or two ago. An awful lot of bulbs claim to be much, much brighter than they can possibly be; it wasn't uncommon to see `3W' bulbs claimed as outputting 500-600lm, which would place them at ~170-200lm/W. I was always disappointed with their brightness when I got them, until some googling revealed that, as a rough working figure, 80lm/W was more realistic. Once I started working on that basis, the bulbs I got were more in line with my expectations.
buro9 11y ago
You could just purchase stage lighting. Stage lighting fixtures use the halogen metal iodide bulbs that he salivates over at the end, and already solve all of the issues he outlined. They provide their own ballasts, are metal shielded, use a lens that acts as a UV shield, have built-in cooling. In fact the only issues with stage lighting: 1) The cooling wasn't designed to be silent (it isn't expected to be near someone in a near-silent environment) 2) The lamp casing wasn't designed to be near anything flammable (they get very hot) 3) The lens and casing is designed to throw the beam in a very small angle of spread over a reasonably long distance (they're not designed to point at your face from a few feet) But given that, it seems reasonable that one could put it farther away and reflect it into the space you want lit. And if he really wanted to go crazy whilst staying with LEDs, then he could just get a few of these: http://pulsarlight.com/products/chroma-range/chromaflood200/ http://pulsarlight.com/products/chroma-range/chromaflood200/ which are used in architectural lighting and each one produces 10k lumens, and they are safe for indoor and outdoor use, are waterproof, and can be driven from standard mains power.
- cauterized 11y ago
  There's another issue with stage lighting, which is that they draw enough power to flip most residential circuit breakers and possibly to cause electrical fires as well. You're looking at 500W per lighting unit; 575W for the more modern ones with bluer hue. Most theaters are specially wired from the mains to a bank of "dimmers" that safely provide at least 2000W per circuit.
  - Symbiote 11y ago
    That should be no problem in Europe, Australia, etc. There are portable 3000W appliances, like kettles, heaters and (Old) vacuum cleaners.
    - tallanvor 11y ago
      It's certainly an issue in Europe, especially in older buildings. As an example, my apartment has two breakers - one for the oven, and one for everything else. Which means that in terms of appliance use, I can run my washer, dryer, microwave, or vacuum - attempting to run any two of those at once practically guarantees tripping the breaker.
sambe 11y ago
A recent Cochrane review found very little high quality evidence in either direction: http://www.cochrane.org/CD011269/DEPRESSN_light-therapy-prevention-winter-depression http://www.cochrane.org/CD011269/DEPRESSN_light-therapy-prev... It's not clear to me why light therapy is considered as a well-researched treatment.
- Loic 11y ago
  From the review, they found 2986 unique papers on the subject, they then assessed 91 papers from the 2986. From these 91, only 1 had a rigorous double blind testing but on only 46 people. The exposures for the light source was 2500 lux, IR light and no special treatment. The results were not significant. So, lot-researched but maybe not well-enough researched.
  - ekianjo 11y ago
    In other words, the statistical power of such studies is so low, that it's like social science at best: a galore of false positive over true positive effects.
  - bradleyjg 11y ago
    How do you go about blinding a study which does or does not shine a bright light in subject's faces?
    - MengerSponge 11y ago
      I'm guessing you vary the intensity and spectrum of the light. If the treatment doesn't show a dose-response curve of some kind, then it probably just doesn't work. Standard academic disclaimer applies: This isn't my field of study, and I'm sure there are many subtle mistakes in what I just said.
      - tacos 11y ago
        A quick Google confirms this: they use either an identical-looking light with a different response, or a different light altogether. "Here's a light, here's a sugar pill, log your mood please..." As silly as that all sounds, it's already a million times better than what this guy did. He took the "if a little is ineffective a LOT will be better" approach and built a damn lighthouse in his living room. And if the goal is a DIY project and a blog post, OF COURSE you'll feel better after "your treatment." It's approaching group therapy at that point. There's a lot of this crap on HN lately.
zeristor 11y ago
I thought that a large part of the positive response was due specifically to light in the blue part of the spectrum. Hence blue LED devices, ironically blue light should help you if you're feeling blue. I used a light meter app on my iPhone to measure the light outside in London on a sunny winter's noon, and that came in at 25 Mlux; suitable for an operating theatre apparently.
- Sammi 11y ago
  Yes. Because of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intrinsically_photosensitive_retinal_ganglion_cells https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intrinsically_photosensitive_r...
lugus35 11y ago
Of interest https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10802144 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10802144
dalys 11y ago
Wouldn't it be better to set f.lux to a latitude of 0 degrees and a longitude of 0 degrees? I live at 59°N 18°E so the opposite hemisphere would mean I currently would have daylight between 02:29 and 19:31. While 0, 0 gives you roughly 06:00 - 18:00.
atemerev 11y ago
Occasionally (3-5 times per winter) I go to the nearest tanning bed room in the nearby gym, choosing the bed with the least UV and the most brightness. Yeah, I know, tanning beds are imported directly from Hell to give us skin cancer and stuff. But a sunny day in LA or Barcelona summer will give you much more UV than that. And it really helps with the aforementioned SAD.
- jp555 11y ago
  Agreed about strategic tanning bed/booth use in winter. I don't understand the worry when you can precisely dose the minimum light you need vs. A random amount of much more ionizing sunlight.
peter303 11y ago
Colorado pot grower suppliers market LED grow lights that simulate sunlight. Conventional grow lighting is one the largest energy hogs in Colorado. LED alternatives consumea sixth of the energy.
lelf 11y ago
> There’s clinical evidence that ramping up the brightness gradually before you wake up (“dawn simulation”) is highly effective. Can someone recommend a ready-made solution?
- rietta 11y ago
  A programmable dimmer, such as one of the Casetas from Lutron, would work. Set the brigtnesses to a time to increase over a period of several minutes starting at your designed time.
- MrBuddyCasino 11y ago
  I have this: http://www.amazon.de/Philips-HF3520-01-Sonnenaufgangfunktion-digitales/dp/B008LR3KD8/ref=zg_bs_248423031_1 http://www.amazon.de/Philips-HF3520-01-Sonnenaufgangfunktion... Not sure if it helps, but it is nicer to wake up to compared to using a regular alarm clock.
  - DenisM 11y ago
    I use this lamp too. Highly recommend it.
- nmcfarl 11y ago
  I use a Phillips hue system to do this. Not for SAD reasons - just because I found it much less jarring to wake up with the sun when I could do that, than with an alarm clock. Since waking up at set time became necessary I tried this out and it works fantastically. Plus the hue system is very versatile and programmable with many other tricks. Not exactly cheap though.
  - wpietri 11y ago
    I second the Hue recommendation. They're a solid product. They aren't as good at rendering arbitrary color, but that's because they optimized for excellent whites. Their API is also really good: clear, well-documented, REST-y. I wrote my own software to simulate a day/night cycle in my house, and I'm very happy with it. It's a much easier way to wake up, and having the gradual dimming in the evening makes it easier to go to bed on time.
insickness 11y ago
He doesn't mention an important variable here: time. The less light you have, the more time you need to achieve the desired effect. I leave my lights on all day and they work to reduce my SAD.
applecore 11y ago
You seem convinced your brain "slows down" after the equinox due to (the lack of) bright light, but it's probably just the placebo effect. Has anyone ever convincingly measured the effect of bright light therapy on mood and intelligence?
- wpietri 11y ago
  Would you care to show the math on your "probably" here? Because I suspect it's not an actual mathematical estimate, but a way of puffing up your personal guess. Which is a weird thing to guess about given that this person has orders of magnitude more data about their experience than you do.
  - applecore 11y ago
    Sure thing! A meta-analysis of placebo-controlled trials found that when disorders are amenable to placebos, the placebo effect is robust and approaches the treatment effect[1]. For psychological disorders, particularly depression, it's been shown that placebos are nearly as effective as active medications[2]. [1]: http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.psych.59.113006.095941 http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.psych.5... [2]: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jclp.20129/full http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jclp.20129/full
    - wpietri 11y ago
      You're asserting a nocebo effect, not a placebo effect, so I don't believe your links are relevant. Further, this person is talking about a perceived correlation between an experience and a natural change, not an intervention, which means it may not even be a nocebo effect, but a different category of issue altogether. Given that, I again suggest you cannot actually demonstrate any math on your claim of probability. Again, I think you're dressing up your feelings in sciencey talk. Further, your request is nearly tautological. The way that one gets to a big, statistically robust test of a hypothesis is via small stepping stones. E.g., this sort of self-experimentation. If you scoff at everybody doing something small and say, "you're probably wrong because there's no big evidence", you decrease the chances of getting the sort of proof that you claim to want. I don't think there's anything wrong with saying, "personally, I'd like to see convincing measures of the effect of bright light therapy on mood and intelligence before I adopt this." But that's frustratingly different than your apparent attitude that in 2 minutes of thought you know more about this guy's experience than he does.
mapt 11y ago
It is perfectly within our reach to simulate a bright daylight sky with the sun behind clouds - around 5k-10k lux - it just requires a fairly large wattage of lighting in a number of indirect fixtures. White metal halide, LEDs, and fluorescents all have efficiencies in the 50-100lumen/watt range, that just means you need to apply around 100 watts per square meter of matte white ceiling you're trying to illuminate. I like the idea of supplementing the white lighting with colored (eg: red, red-orange, green) LEDs, which can be throttled to achieve a particular color temperature. Ideally your ceiling would be very high for this setup to give space for the light to diffuse from hanging ceiling reflectors, which is unfortunately not the case for most homes. For realistic homes, there is a style of floor lamp termed 'torchiere' that may work, though for best results you're going to want to find one with a large, fully reflective shroud - lights this bright are pretty harsh if they're not diffused well. Set up something like this on an automatic timer to simulate the sky, and I suspect a lot of our sleep issues would go away fairly quickly.
- derefr 11y ago
  I don't believe you need high ceilings; you can diffuse light just as well over short distances with metamaterials. Look at http://coelux.com/ http://coelux.com/, for example. Ideally, you'd want one of those, brighter, covering your whole ceiling.
- wpietri 11y ago
  > Set up something like this on an automatic timer to simulate the sky, and I suspect a lot of our sleep issues would go away fairly quickly. I had a similar hypothesis, so I built something like what you describe: https://github.com/wpietri/sunrise https://github.com/wpietri/sunrise Currently I'm at only 4000 lumens or so in my main space, and I'd like it brighter. But my sleep is definitely better. I attribute it not so much to the daytime light, but to the way my apartment gradually gets dimmer and redder in the evenings. I had set out to make something like a SAD lamp for my whole apartment. But as a side effect, I also basically made f.lux for my apartment, and I really like it. When evening comes, I generally have to fight to stay awake rather than fighting to go to sleep.
dolguldur 11y ago
If you don't mind the process of finding something (or waiting for something to come up) on eBay too much, I recommend looking for used photo/film equipment out there. I cheaply sourced two photo/film lamps on eBay. One is a 500W LED lamp and somewhat blueish, the other is a 330W fluorescent, but of very high quality, it's a very convincing daylight tone (not at all greenish). Especially the latter makes for a very nice room light. Both were barely used, yet substantially cheaper than new. The advantage is that you can easily change their angle on one or two axes. I originally bought them for photography and then started liking them as regular room lights, only to later even realize that I basically got myself SAD lamps.
- DenisM 11y ago
  Can you give some links of model #s? I've been thinking of this for a while, but never knew where to start. Thanks!
  - dolguldur 11y ago
    No, sorry, unfortunately I can't. Bought mine on eBay.de a few years ago. Now on eBay.com the auction format seems to be hardly used anymore for things like that. Hmm. Many direct imports though. Maybe my suggestion is outdated.
jrockway 11y ago
Isn't staring into your computer screen all the light you need? Everyone (even Apple now) says that the light screws up your sleep cycle. Wouldn't it help with SAD?
- jordanthoms 11y ago
  It's (probably) enough light to disrupt melatonin production in the evenings, but that doesn't imply that it's enough light to get you to produce Vitamin D etc and help with SAD during the day. Computer screens don't produce much light even compared to a normal bulb.
  - jrockway 11y ago
    Good point. I forgot about Vitamin D. But isn't that produced through exposure to UV, which LEDs don't emit?
hga 11y ago
I address this by sticking this light http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002WTCHLC http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002WTCHLC 9 inches from my face instead of the prescribed 12 inches for 10,000 lumens, and use it for 40 instead of the normal 30 minutes/day. Inconvenient, but has made major improvements from the (still useful but not as much) Phillips 6x10 array of blue LEDs I started with at 12 inches 3*30 minutes a day. Also helps me wake up in the morning ^_^. That said, this seems to be right to me, but I could well believe there are people who need 30,000 lumens and therefore have to get more creative.
upofadown 11y ago
There is some thought that the normal yellowing of the lens as people get older makes them less sensitive to the effect of blue light. If so, then older people need more light to get the same circadian effect as younger people. It would be interesting to know how old the writer is.
rsync 11y ago
I searched the authors posting for the word "exercise" and found it appears zero times. I'm all about minute optimizations, but not until you've exhausted the big, basic ones. Your (insert issue here) is not interesting at all unless it manifests itself in the presence of regular walking, weekly resistance training and a decent cardio routine.[1] Do all of those things and your (issue) is still extant ? Well, now we've got something interesting to talk about... [1] Also known as, basic, functional human output.
- DenisM 11y ago
  Exactly. All of that, plus basic sleep hygiene. If you are complaining about sleep and energy levels, and yet you haven't been following sleep hygiene rules religiously for at least 6 weeks, then you're just fooling yourself. These are easy to implement, they are proven medically, and they have tons of other benefits for heart health etc.
  - nitrogen 11y ago
    It's easy to say things are "easy to implement" when you don't have SAD. How are you supposed to exercise if you're already suffering from SAD? How much of the perceived benefit from walking comes from sunlight exposure? What about climes where there are extended overcast periods with no direct sunlight for weeks at a time? Any claim of "you can't do X until you did Y first" is of little value to people who have adequate motivation or resources to do X but not to do Y. Maybe doing X will make it easier to do Y later. In fact, this is the exact approach I took; one of my motivations for starting an automation startup years ago was better lighting for myself, and that better lighting later made it easier to exercise more, start swimming regularly, etc.
    - DenisM 11y ago
      Sleep hygiene does not include exercise, but has half-dozen smaller things. If you don't have enough motivation for it, you need to see a doctor asap. Creating a startup to treat a mood disorder is a very roundabout way of doing things.
hngiszmo 11y ago
As a tech fan, an on-off switch is too simple. I want to be able to adjust the brightness and "color" like the volume of my stereo. I never put my stereo to 100% because we figured out long ago how to do affordable loud speakers that are uncomfortably loud. Why haven't we figured out how to do affordable lights that can be tuned to uncomfortably bright? I want Caribbean beach bright as my 100%, with an "equalizer", to tune the heat/reading comfort/UV/color to my liking. To me it feels like any advance in light bulbs is only on the lumen/watt scale. How long until we have a one million lumen broad spectrum LED configuration that doesn't cost a fortune?
toomim 11y ago
All you need is the 460 nanometer wavelength of light. That's what your eye's daylight detectors are most sensitive to. Halogen lights don't have that frequency, which is why they didn't work for you. Furthermore, you don't need this light all day. Just in the morning and evening. You can get 460 nanometer LED lights from grow shops online for around $50, and put it close to your face for 15 minutes in the morning and evening. It'll reset your rhythm, cure your sad, and that's all you need.
- wodenokoto 11y ago
  > You can get 460 nanometer LED lights from grow shops online What about these: http://www.ebay.com/bhp/460nm-led http://www.ebay.com/bhp/460nm-led ?
- Sammi 11y ago
  Finally someone mentions this. Wikipedia has all the imformation on this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intrinsically_photosensitive_retinal_ganglion_cells https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intrinsically_photosensitive_r... It's because we have special photosensitive cells in the sides of our eyes that only see blue light. They're not part of the vision, they only regulate the circadian rhythm. So all this talk of white light is uninformed. You only need blue light.
lumens 11y ago
I've been saying this for years.
dfc 11y ago
I have two questions: 1. How hard is it to do work on your computer with that much light shining directly behind your monitor? 2. From the amazon bulb description: "Remove The Electronic Ballast, Capacitor,Ignitor In The Fixture" What does that mean? Is it a poorly written instruction to do some obvious? Or is it a strange after market modification?
- jloughry 11y ago
  The ballast, capacitor, and igniter in the Amazon description refers to using the LED lamp to replace a sodium vapour bulb, usually in a large, outdoor lighting fixture, like a street lamp. The LED doesn't need the same support electronics that are required to warm up, start, and control sodium vapour lamps, which have a negative resistance once they get going, and thus will burn out quickly without a ballast in the circuit. The LED lamp has just as much (or more!) support circuitry, but it's built-in; note the comment in one of the reviews that it takes about four seconds to light up once power is applied.
Andys 11y ago
I work from home in an area that gets high amounts of fog, and I frequently go days without seeing the sun. I can confirm that I seemed to need about 10k lumens before making an noticeable change in mood. I used three (1 warm, 2 cold) relatively inexpensive 36W LED bulbs from ebay locally - http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/121704759594 http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/121704759594 (Note they are LARGE and require a free-standing light fixture without any type of lampshade)
polynomial 11y ago
How did I never notice that Seasonal Affective Disorder is "S.A.D."?
bash-j 11y ago
I found you can get cheap <$100 LED 10k+ lumen flood lights targeted at the 4WD market off eBay. You just then need the appropriate power supply, again cheap ~$20. edit: colour for most seem to be 6500k too
- bash-j 11y ago
  Here's an example as a 30k lumen light bar for only $142 http://www.ebay.com/itm/52INCH-300W-LED-LIGHT-BAR-Mounting-Bracket-For-Jeep-JK-Wrangler-Wiring-Kit-US-/281684824117 http://www.ebay.com/itm/52INCH-300W-LED-LIGHT-BAR-Mounting-B...

226 points by ivank 11y ago

I live at 52.5 degrees North. Cosine to the power 4 being what it is, my neighbours and I could be experiencing significantly lower levels of daylight intensity in all seasons than people who live at lower latitudes. In the summer, we will see similar or slightly more daylight integrated over the duration of the day because of the longer days. The OA does not specify the latitude at which he(? assuming the OA is the site owner's work) is living.

Tepix 11y ago
Northern California is mentioned in the article.
- keithpeter 11y ago
  Thanks - failed to pick that reference up.
alkonaut 11y ago
Try SAD at 64 North. No picnic. I'd really like to try s light but don't think I'd have the patience to sit in front of one long enough. If it could be made bright enough that you could have it overhead and work at the same time that would be brilliant.
- ptaipale 11y ago
  I live at 60°N. Several colleagues at work simply keep a bright-light lamp on their desk, in the general direction of the window.
- keithpeter 11y ago
  I don't have SAD (well, I don't notice any particular symptoms anyway). One can imagine that luminaires pointing at a light matt surface ceiling would produce an effect like cloudy daylight, but that might just be cosmetic - the science needs to be done I suppose.
- marvin 11y ago
  I have one of these on my desk, right next to the monitor. Working in front of it for 30-60 minutes a day really helps. Live at 60.5 degrees north. Also take vitamin suppliments and exercise more in winter; it's hard to tell what causes the improvement. With a lamp like this, you don't have to do anything outside of your routine to get more light. You can keep it 20 centimeters (~1 foot) from your eyes, so reduced irradiance due to distance (as this article points out) is not a problem. http://www.usa.philips.com/c-p/HF3318_60/energylight http://www.usa.philips.com/c-p/HF3318_60/energylight
dietrichepp 11y ago
Cosine to the fourth power is the wrong formula, it is for camera lenses and takes into account the apparent size of the pupil from both sides, as well as distance attenuation for objects on a fixed plane. Solar illuminance is proportional just to the cosine, no power.
- keithpeter 11y ago
  Thanks for pointing that out, and that is what I get for relying on memory. I did a bit of googling and found this... http://www.ccfg.org.uk/conferences/downloads/P_Burgess.pdf http://www.ccfg.org.uk/conferences/downloads/P_Burgess.pdf ... which looks relevant and interesting.

shin_lao 11y ago

I found the best to feel better during winter is to supplement my diet with D vitamins.

manmal 11y ago
While Vit D helps me, additionally using a 10k lamp is like night and day, if you forgive the pun.
jbjorge 11y ago
This was my experience as well. For two years I lived at a latitude where I got about zero daylight for 5-6 months per year. My SAD-lamp helped a little (<10k lumens), vitamin D helped a lot.
Hugie 11y ago
How much Vitamin D did you take? Did you measure/calc the amount per kg?
- willsher 11y ago
  From research around the Internet, D3 is generally seen as safe (http://www.mayoclinic.org/drugs-supplements/vitamin-d/safety/hrb-20060400 http://www.mayoclinic.org/drugs-supplements/vitamin-d/safety... is pretty typical on the safety information) Personally I take a D3 supplement of 2000IU/day during the dark months (along with some other supplements due to a mostly vegan diet, some of which contain low D2/D3 amounts, so my actual supplemented intake is around 2400 IU).
jp555 11y ago
Vitamin D will help but it is not the only beneficial compound produced by our skin in the presence of sunlight. Strategic tanning bed/booth & Vitamin D supplementation works best imho. There seems to be attitional benefits to the sunlight induced vitamin D production, possibly related to the oxidation of cholesterol & sulphur as the cholesterol is converted into Vitamin D.

toomanybeersies 11y ago

Interesting that they're in Northern California and get Seasonal Affective Disorder. I live at a similar latitude (except in the Southern Hemisphere) and have never considered that it would be a thing outside of essentially polar latitudes. Over the past couple of winters (I moved further south a few years back) I've had some atrocious winters in terms of mental space. Maybe this is something I should look into.

Symbiote 11y ago
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20170049 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20170049 Seems to conclude latitude doesn't make any difference, which is surprising. But there are other papers with the opposite conclusion.

jensen123 11y ago

I live in Norway, and used to have a big problem with SAD and longer-than-24-hour-cycles. I tried a few of the commercial lamps like he did, and my experience was similar. They helped some, but not enough. My current solution is to take a 1 hour walk outside every day around noon. Also, I've stopped sitting in front of my computer or TV 3 hours within bedtime. Instead I usually spend my late evenings reading paper books. This has solved the longer-than-24-hour-cycles and most of the SAD (it also seems to have completely cleared up my acne). However, on days when it's overcast and kinda dark, I still notice some SAD. On those dark days, the kind of lamp that he built probably would have been nice.

kwelstr 11y ago
Probably in days that's too overcast a good serving of fatty fish will help. Vitamin d3 is either synthesized from sun exposure or supplemented through diet, it is a good mood regulator.
- vardump 11y ago
  While both are related to lack of day light exposure in the winter time, lack of vitamin D production is another issue, probably not related to SAD. Regardless, a good reminder. Fish has also other health benefits. I'd still take some vitamin D supplement on top of that.
  - lunula 11y ago
    Obviously this is purely anecdotal. I have the same habits as the author with respect to light exposure regulation. I live in England and take an hour walk every day around noon regardless of weather. At night I avoid computers for about two hours before bedtime and although I do not read paper books (I should find my local library...) I set a screen filter on my amoled phablet and often invert the text so it shows white on black. I exclusively use a red LED at night for lighting. This all helps a lot, bit the thing that seems most striking is vitamin D. Sometimes I feel down and realize I haven't had exposure to many sources for a while. A few days of heavy doses and my mood improves. I don't take it orally all the time, just as I imagine I need it. The effect is sublte but it would be cool if someone could figure out how to quanitfy. As a result of all this care about light I haven't had a SAD winter for most of a decade. I feel "cured" of it enough that spending time in even more northerly places in the winter does not trigger unpleasant depression. That said, us northern peoples should slow down in the winter. Thousands of years of selection has driven this home, and it is nothing to be upset about. We will make up for the slowness of the winter in the long days of summer.

coderdude 11y ago

Feeling bad because it's winter? Yee-ikes. Plant problems. I can't believe it's actually called SAD. Luckily summer will be here again and we can all be STOKED.

kristiandupont 11y ago

I don't see any info about the spectrum produced by the bulbs he recommends. Color temperature is one thing, but that's equivalent to describing a chord with just the root key. I suspect that a spectrum as close to the sun as possible (including UV and IR) is better.

dietrichepp 11y ago
Any particular reason that you suspect that UV and IR are important, or is this just pure speculation?
- kristiandupont 11y ago
  No, that's just speculation.
- collyw 11y ago
  I took an interest in this a while ago after travelling a lot then coming back to Scotland. I seem to remember blue light being recommended. Moved to Barcelona and never really thought about it since.
kristiandupont 11y ago
Curious about the downvotes here. Is this a controversial view or something?
enimodas 11y ago
In the article she talks about CRI ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_rendering_index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_rendering_index ) which is similar

julianpye 11y ago

As a teen on weekends I worked a lot on filmsets as assistant to a lighting cameraman. Switching HMI lamps on was really amazing, the mood of the set changed in an instant. It was quite energetic, so I completely get what the author is saying. They usually were positioned outside of windows, allowing for a stable consistent sunlight simulation across scenes.

vanderZwan 11y ago
From the wiki article[0] on HMI lamps: > 85–108 lumens per watt of electricity. Sounds pretty good! > With HMI bulbs, color temperature varies significantly with lamp age. A new bulb generally will output at a color temperature close to 15,000 K during its first few hours. As the bulb ages, the color temperature reaches its nominal value of around 5600 K or 6000 K. With age, the arc length becomes larger as more of the electrodes burn away. This requires greater voltage to sustain the arc, and as voltage increases, color temperature decreases proportionately at a rate of approximately 0.5–1 kelvin for every hour burnt. For this reason, and other safety reasons, HMI bulbs are not recommended to be used past half their lifetime. Oh.. Then again, burn-in is something all lamps suffer from, right? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrargyrum_medium-arc_iodide_lamp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrargyrum_medium-arc_iodide_...

windsurfer 11y ago

This review for the linked led strip is interesting: This is a perfectly usable (and subjectively bright) LED strip, but beware, the specified lumens are a lie. My power meter reports a draw of 33W and another reviewer reports ~38.6W. The maximum efficiency of a 5730 SMD LED is ~110 lumens/watt, so this strip is outputting at most ~3630 lumens. Seller's description of "45-50LM" per LED would lead you to believe this can output 15000 lumens or ~454 lumens/watt. This is far outside the world record 200 lumens/watt bulbs and even outside the theoretical physical limit of 250–370 lm/W.

ivank 11y ago
I posted a little further investigation at http://meaningness.com/metablog/sad-light-lumens/comments#comment-774 http://meaningness.com/metablog/sad-light-lumens/comments#co... > http://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/51778/ http://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/51778/ suggests that these LED strips have to be overvolted and powered at multiple points, which might bring them closer to ~7000 lumens. > I'm also going to try comparing the hkbayi Super Bright to LEDMO's strip with 600 LEDs: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B013C2U09S/ http://www.amazon.com/dp/B013C2U09S/
- jacquesm 11y ago
  I have on of those Super Bright led strips in the kitchen and it is actually too bright for direct lighting uses. You end up with afterimages for minutes on end after just glancing in their general direction. Would recommend you only use these for indirect lighting applications.
koralatov 11y ago
I've come across the same sort of exaggeration on eBay when I was buying LED bulbs a year or two ago. An awful lot of bulbs claim to be much, much brighter than they can possibly be; it wasn't uncommon to see `3W' bulbs claimed as outputting 500-600lm, which would place them at ~170-200lm/W. I was always disappointed with their brightness when I got them, until some googling revealed that, as a rough working figure, 80lm/W was more realistic. Once I started working on that basis, the bulbs I got were more in line with my expectations.

buro9 11y ago

You could just purchase stage lighting. Stage lighting fixtures use the halogen metal iodide bulbs that he salivates over at the end, and already solve all of the issues he outlined. They provide their own ballasts, are metal shielded, use a lens that acts as a UV shield, have built-in cooling. In fact the only issues with stage lighting: 1) The cooling wasn't designed to be silent (it isn't expected to be near someone in a near-silent environment) 2) The lamp casing wasn't designed to be near anything flammable (they get very hot) 3) The lens and casing is designed to throw the beam in a very small angle of spread over a reasonably long distance (they're not designed to point at your face from a few feet) But given that, it seems reasonable that one could put it farther away and reflect it into the space you want lit. And if he really wanted to go crazy whilst staying with LEDs, then he could just get a few of these: http://pulsarlight.com/products/chroma-range/chromaflood200/ http://pulsarlight.com/products/chroma-range/chromaflood200/ which are used in architectural lighting and each one produces 10k lumens, and they are safe for indoor and outdoor use, are waterproof, and can be driven from standard mains power.

cauterized 11y ago
There's another issue with stage lighting, which is that they draw enough power to flip most residential circuit breakers and possibly to cause electrical fires as well. You're looking at 500W per lighting unit; 575W for the more modern ones with bluer hue. Most theaters are specially wired from the mains to a bank of "dimmers" that safely provide at least 2000W per circuit.
- Symbiote 11y ago
  That should be no problem in Europe, Australia, etc. There are portable 3000W appliances, like kettles, heaters and (Old) vacuum cleaners.
  - tallanvor 11y ago
    It's certainly an issue in Europe, especially in older buildings. As an example, my apartment has two breakers - one for the oven, and one for everything else. Which means that in terms of appliance use, I can run my washer, dryer, microwave, or vacuum - attempting to run any two of those at once practically guarantees tripping the breaker.

sambe 11y ago

A recent Cochrane review found very little high quality evidence in either direction: http://www.cochrane.org/CD011269/DEPRESSN_light-therapy-prevention-winter-depression http://www.cochrane.org/CD011269/DEPRESSN_light-therapy-prev... It's not clear to me why light therapy is considered as a well-researched treatment.

Loic 11y ago
From the review, they found 2986 unique papers on the subject, they then assessed 91 papers from the 2986. From these 91, only 1 had a rigorous double blind testing but on only 46 people. The exposures for the light source was 2500 lux, IR light and no special treatment. The results were not significant. So, lot-researched but maybe not well-enough researched.
- ekianjo 11y ago
  In other words, the statistical power of such studies is so low, that it's like social science at best: a galore of false positive over true positive effects.
- bradleyjg 11y ago
  How do you go about blinding a study which does or does not shine a bright light in subject's faces?
  - MengerSponge 11y ago
    I'm guessing you vary the intensity and spectrum of the light. If the treatment doesn't show a dose-response curve of some kind, then it probably just doesn't work. Standard academic disclaimer applies: This isn't my field of study, and I'm sure there are many subtle mistakes in what I just said.
    - tacos 11y ago
      A quick Google confirms this: they use either an identical-looking light with a different response, or a different light altogether. "Here's a light, here's a sugar pill, log your mood please..." As silly as that all sounds, it's already a million times better than what this guy did. He took the "if a little is ineffective a LOT will be better" approach and built a damn lighthouse in his living room. And if the goal is a DIY project and a blog post, OF COURSE you'll feel better after "your treatment." It's approaching group therapy at that point. There's a lot of this crap on HN lately.

zeristor 11y ago

I thought that a large part of the positive response was due specifically to light in the blue part of the spectrum. Hence blue LED devices, ironically blue light should help you if you're feeling blue. I used a light meter app on my iPhone to measure the light outside in London on a sunny winter's noon, and that came in at 25 Mlux; suitable for an operating theatre apparently.

Sammi 11y ago
Yes. Because of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intrinsically_photosensitive_retinal_ganglion_cells https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intrinsically_photosensitive_r...

lugus35 11y ago

Of interest https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10802144 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10802144

dalys 11y ago

Wouldn't it be better to set f.lux to a latitude of 0 degrees and a longitude of 0 degrees? I live at 59°N 18°E so the opposite hemisphere would mean I currently would have daylight between 02:29 and 19:31. While 0, 0 gives you roughly 06:00 - 18:00.

atemerev 11y ago

Occasionally (3-5 times per winter) I go to the nearest tanning bed room in the nearby gym, choosing the bed with the least UV and the most brightness. Yeah, I know, tanning beds are imported directly from Hell to give us skin cancer and stuff. But a sunny day in LA or Barcelona summer will give you much more UV than that. And it really helps with the aforementioned SAD.

jp555 11y ago
Agreed about strategic tanning bed/booth use in winter. I don't understand the worry when you can precisely dose the minimum light you need vs. A random amount of much more ionizing sunlight.

peter303 11y ago

Colorado pot grower suppliers market LED grow lights that simulate sunlight. Conventional grow lighting is one the largest energy hogs in Colorado. LED alternatives consumea sixth of the energy.

lelf 11y ago

> There’s clinical evidence that ramping up the brightness gradually before you wake up (“dawn simulation”) is highly effective. Can someone recommend a ready-made solution?

rietta 11y ago
A programmable dimmer, such as one of the Casetas from Lutron, would work. Set the brigtnesses to a time to increase over a period of several minutes starting at your designed time.
MrBuddyCasino 11y ago
I have this: http://www.amazon.de/Philips-HF3520-01-Sonnenaufgangfunktion-digitales/dp/B008LR3KD8/ref=zg_bs_248423031_1 http://www.amazon.de/Philips-HF3520-01-Sonnenaufgangfunktion... Not sure if it helps, but it is nicer to wake up to compared to using a regular alarm clock.
- DenisM 11y ago
  I use this lamp too. Highly recommend it.
nmcfarl 11y ago
I use a Phillips hue system to do this. Not for SAD reasons - just because I found it much less jarring to wake up with the sun when I could do that, than with an alarm clock. Since waking up at set time became necessary I tried this out and it works fantastically. Plus the hue system is very versatile and programmable with many other tricks. Not exactly cheap though.
- wpietri 11y ago
  I second the Hue recommendation. They're a solid product. They aren't as good at rendering arbitrary color, but that's because they optimized for excellent whites. Their API is also really good: clear, well-documented, REST-y. I wrote my own software to simulate a day/night cycle in my house, and I'm very happy with it. It's a much easier way to wake up, and having the gradual dimming in the evening makes it easier to go to bed on time.

insickness 11y ago

He doesn't mention an important variable here: time. The less light you have, the more time you need to achieve the desired effect. I leave my lights on all day and they work to reduce my SAD.

applecore 11y ago

You seem convinced your brain "slows down" after the equinox due to (the lack of) bright light, but it's probably just the placebo effect. Has anyone ever convincingly measured the effect of bright light therapy on mood and intelligence?

wpietri 11y ago
Would you care to show the math on your "probably" here? Because I suspect it's not an actual mathematical estimate, but a way of puffing up your personal guess. Which is a weird thing to guess about given that this person has orders of magnitude more data about their experience than you do.
- applecore 11y ago
  Sure thing! A meta-analysis of placebo-controlled trials found that when disorders are amenable to placebos, the placebo effect is robust and approaches the treatment effect[1]. For psychological disorders, particularly depression, it's been shown that placebos are nearly as effective as active medications[2]. [1]: http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.psych.59.113006.095941 http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.psych.5... [2]: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jclp.20129/full http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jclp.20129/full
  - wpietri 11y ago
    You're asserting a nocebo effect, not a placebo effect, so I don't believe your links are relevant. Further, this person is talking about a perceived correlation between an experience and a natural change, not an intervention, which means it may not even be a nocebo effect, but a different category of issue altogether. Given that, I again suggest you cannot actually demonstrate any math on your claim of probability. Again, I think you're dressing up your feelings in sciencey talk. Further, your request is nearly tautological. The way that one gets to a big, statistically robust test of a hypothesis is via small stepping stones. E.g., this sort of self-experimentation. If you scoff at everybody doing something small and say, "you're probably wrong because there's no big evidence", you decrease the chances of getting the sort of proof that you claim to want. I don't think there's anything wrong with saying, "personally, I'd like to see convincing measures of the effect of bright light therapy on mood and intelligence before I adopt this." But that's frustratingly different than your apparent attitude that in 2 minutes of thought you know more about this guy's experience than he does.

mapt 11y ago

It is perfectly within our reach to simulate a bright daylight sky with the sun behind clouds - around 5k-10k lux - it just requires a fairly large wattage of lighting in a number of indirect fixtures. White metal halide, LEDs, and fluorescents all have efficiencies in the 50-100lumen/watt range, that just means you need to apply around 100 watts per square meter of matte white ceiling you're trying to illuminate. I like the idea of supplementing the white lighting with colored (eg: red, red-orange, green) LEDs, which can be throttled to achieve a particular color temperature. Ideally your ceiling would be very high for this setup to give space for the light to diffuse from hanging ceiling reflectors, which is unfortunately not the case for most homes. For realistic homes, there is a style of floor lamp termed 'torchiere' that may work, though for best results you're going to want to find one with a large, fully reflective shroud - lights this bright are pretty harsh if they're not diffused well. Set up something like this on an automatic timer to simulate the sky, and I suspect a lot of our sleep issues would go away fairly quickly.

derefr 11y ago
I don't believe you need high ceilings; you can diffuse light just as well over short distances with metamaterials. Look at http://coelux.com/ http://coelux.com/, for example. Ideally, you'd want one of those, brighter, covering your whole ceiling.
wpietri 11y ago
> Set up something like this on an automatic timer to simulate the sky, and I suspect a lot of our sleep issues would go away fairly quickly. I had a similar hypothesis, so I built something like what you describe: https://github.com/wpietri/sunrise https://github.com/wpietri/sunrise Currently I'm at only 4000 lumens or so in my main space, and I'd like it brighter. But my sleep is definitely better. I attribute it not so much to the daytime light, but to the way my apartment gradually gets dimmer and redder in the evenings. I had set out to make something like a SAD lamp for my whole apartment. But as a side effect, I also basically made f.lux for my apartment, and I really like it. When evening comes, I generally have to fight to stay awake rather than fighting to go to sleep.

dolguldur 11y ago

If you don't mind the process of finding something (or waiting for something to come up) on eBay too much, I recommend looking for used photo/film equipment out there. I cheaply sourced two photo/film lamps on eBay. One is a 500W LED lamp and somewhat blueish, the other is a 330W fluorescent, but of very high quality, it's a very convincing daylight tone (not at all greenish). Especially the latter makes for a very nice room light. Both were barely used, yet substantially cheaper than new. The advantage is that you can easily change their angle on one or two axes. I originally bought them for photography and then started liking them as regular room lights, only to later even realize that I basically got myself SAD lamps.

DenisM 11y ago
Can you give some links of model #s? I've been thinking of this for a while, but never knew where to start. Thanks!
- dolguldur 11y ago
  No, sorry, unfortunately I can't. Bought mine on eBay.de a few years ago. Now on eBay.com the auction format seems to be hardly used anymore for things like that. Hmm. Many direct imports though. Maybe my suggestion is outdated.

jrockway 11y ago

Isn't staring into your computer screen all the light you need? Everyone (even Apple now) says that the light screws up your sleep cycle. Wouldn't it help with SAD?

jordanthoms 11y ago
It's (probably) enough light to disrupt melatonin production in the evenings, but that doesn't imply that it's enough light to get you to produce Vitamin D etc and help with SAD during the day. Computer screens don't produce much light even compared to a normal bulb.
- jrockway 11y ago
  Good point. I forgot about Vitamin D. But isn't that produced through exposure to UV, which LEDs don't emit?

hga 11y ago

I address this by sticking this light http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002WTCHLC http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002WTCHLC 9 inches from my face instead of the prescribed 12 inches for 10,000 lumens, and use it for 40 instead of the normal 30 minutes/day. Inconvenient, but has made major improvements from the (still useful but not as much) Phillips 6x10 array of blue LEDs I started with at 12 inches 3*30 minutes a day. Also helps me wake up in the morning ^_^. That said, this seems to be right to me, but I could well believe there are people who need 30,000 lumens and therefore have to get more creative.

upofadown 11y ago

There is some thought that the normal yellowing of the lens as people get older makes them less sensitive to the effect of blue light. If so, then older people need more light to get the same circadian effect as younger people. It would be interesting to know how old the writer is.

rsync 11y ago

I searched the authors posting for the word "exercise" and found it appears zero times. I'm all about minute optimizations, but not until you've exhausted the big, basic ones. Your (insert issue here) is not interesting at all unless it manifests itself in the presence of regular walking, weekly resistance training and a decent cardio routine.[1] Do all of those things and your (issue) is still extant ? Well, now we've got something interesting to talk about... [1] Also known as, basic, functional human output.

DenisM 11y ago
Exactly. All of that, plus basic sleep hygiene. If you are complaining about sleep and energy levels, and yet you haven't been following sleep hygiene rules religiously for at least 6 weeks, then you're just fooling yourself. These are easy to implement, they are proven medically, and they have tons of other benefits for heart health etc.
- nitrogen 11y ago
  It's easy to say things are "easy to implement" when you don't have SAD. How are you supposed to exercise if you're already suffering from SAD? How much of the perceived benefit from walking comes from sunlight exposure? What about climes where there are extended overcast periods with no direct sunlight for weeks at a time? Any claim of "you can't do X until you did Y first" is of little value to people who have adequate motivation or resources to do X but not to do Y. Maybe doing X will make it easier to do Y later. In fact, this is the exact approach I took; one of my motivations for starting an automation startup years ago was better lighting for myself, and that better lighting later made it easier to exercise more, start swimming regularly, etc.
  - DenisM 11y ago
    Sleep hygiene does not include exercise, but has half-dozen smaller things. If you don't have enough motivation for it, you need to see a doctor asap. Creating a startup to treat a mood disorder is a very roundabout way of doing things.

hngiszmo 11y ago

As a tech fan, an on-off switch is too simple. I want to be able to adjust the brightness and "color" like the volume of my stereo. I never put my stereo to 100% because we figured out long ago how to do affordable loud speakers that are uncomfortably loud. Why haven't we figured out how to do affordable lights that can be tuned to uncomfortably bright? I want Caribbean beach bright as my 100%, with an "equalizer", to tune the heat/reading comfort/UV/color to my liking. To me it feels like any advance in light bulbs is only on the lumen/watt scale. How long until we have a one million lumen broad spectrum LED configuration that doesn't cost a fortune?

toomim 11y ago

All you need is the 460 nanometer wavelength of light. That's what your eye's daylight detectors are most sensitive to. Halogen lights don't have that frequency, which is why they didn't work for you. Furthermore, you don't need this light all day. Just in the morning and evening. You can get 460 nanometer LED lights from grow shops online for around $50, and put it close to your face for 15 minutes in the morning and evening. It'll reset your rhythm, cure your sad, and that's all you need.

wodenokoto 11y ago
> You can get 460 nanometer LED lights from grow shops online What about these: http://www.ebay.com/bhp/460nm-led http://www.ebay.com/bhp/460nm-led ?
Sammi 11y ago
Finally someone mentions this. Wikipedia has all the imformation on this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intrinsically_photosensitive_retinal_ganglion_cells https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intrinsically_photosensitive_r... It's because we have special photosensitive cells in the sides of our eyes that only see blue light. They're not part of the vision, they only regulate the circadian rhythm. So all this talk of white light is uninformed. You only need blue light.

lumens 11y ago

I've been saying this for years.

dfc 11y ago

I have two questions: 1. How hard is it to do work on your computer with that much light shining directly behind your monitor? 2. From the amazon bulb description: "Remove The Electronic Ballast, Capacitor,Ignitor In The Fixture" What does that mean? Is it a poorly written instruction to do some obvious? Or is it a strange after market modification?

jloughry 11y ago
The ballast, capacitor, and igniter in the Amazon description refers to using the LED lamp to replace a sodium vapour bulb, usually in a large, outdoor lighting fixture, like a street lamp. The LED doesn't need the same support electronics that are required to warm up, start, and control sodium vapour lamps, which have a negative resistance once they get going, and thus will burn out quickly without a ballast in the circuit. The LED lamp has just as much (or more!) support circuitry, but it's built-in; note the comment in one of the reviews that it takes about four seconds to light up once power is applied.

Andys 11y ago

I work from home in an area that gets high amounts of fog, and I frequently go days without seeing the sun. I can confirm that I seemed to need about 10k lumens before making an noticeable change in mood. I used three (1 warm, 2 cold) relatively inexpensive 36W LED bulbs from ebay locally - http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/121704759594 http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/121704759594 (Note they are LARGE and require a free-standing light fixture without any type of lampshade)

polynomial 11y ago

How did I never notice that Seasonal Affective Disorder is "S.A.D."?

bash-j 11y ago

I found you can get cheap <$100 LED 10k+ lumen flood lights targeted at the 4WD market off eBay. You just then need the appropriate power supply, again cheap ~$20. edit: colour for most seem to be 6500k too

bash-j 11y ago
Here's an example as a 30k lumen light bar for only $142 http://www.ebay.com/itm/52INCH-300W-LED-LIGHT-BAR-Mounting-Bracket-For-Jeep-JK-Wrangler-Wiring-Kit-US-/281684824117 http://www.ebay.com/itm/52INCH-300W-LED-LIGHT-BAR-Mounting-B...