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Somebody on reddit made a cheap do-it-yourself version for their basement office for $150 (using LED lights for plants): http://imgur.com/a/r31Gb http://imgur.
by bd 11y ago
Somebody on reddit made a cheap do-it-yourself version for their basement office for $150 (using LED lights for plants):
http://imgur.com/a/r31Gb http://imgur.com/a/r31Gb
While definitely not the same, there should be an opportunity for something costing less than $35,000 while still getting closer.
For example here is DIY 90,000 lumen flashlight that supposedly cost $250-350:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JVqRy0sWWY&t=3m40s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JVqRy0sWWY&t=3m40s
Using 10 of these LED chips:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/100W-Warm-White-3000K-LED-Light-High-Power-Component-Chip-100-Watt-8000-LM-USA-/281833108024 http://www.ebay.com/itm/100W-Warm-White-3000K-LED-Light-High...
- ipsum2 11y agoWhile this is is nice, the main breakthrough of CoeLux is the simulation of Rayleigh scattering, not just a bright diffused light.
- bd 11y agoLot of things scatter. There is probably something cheaper than $35,000 per light. Maybe milk could be used? :) http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-wyj6iHUndhg/UXpUk6HxfLI/AAAAAAAACuw/2FDyuDgm8U0/s1600/Untitled-2+copy.jpg http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-wyj6iHUndhg/UXpUk6HxfLI/AAAAAAAACu... http://thestandardmodel.blogspot.com/2013/04/when-i-was-child-i-often-wonder-why-sky.html http://thestandardmodel.blogspot.com/2013/04/when-i-was-chil... It feels like they charge so much not because there would be some principal engineering / technical obstacle but simply because they can. They have been the first who realized something like this can be done (now that LED lighting progressed so far) and for rich customers this is a feature that's highly desirable, so they are willing to pay so much. They do have a good marketing. Their business model depends on others thinking there is some special magic. I had to see that reddit post to even start questioning that something like this could be replicated.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- derefr 11y agoThey might charge as much as they do because they're making their special-sauce material in a really non-cost-effective small-batch way. If that's true, then if they just released their material process patent into the public domain, probably the windows would still cost $35k for a while, and then gradually decline, step-wise, as competitors created bigger and better processes to do the same thing.
- madaxe_again 11y agoMaybe milk could be used? Worst smelling light ever. You could even say that that idea stinks! OTOH a colloidal solution of silver could potentially do the job.
- agumonkey 11y agoAnd while fun to read, the cheap trick above doesn't have the right lightwaves to make you feel the same.
- bd 11y agoI have a suspicion you may not even need scattering to achieve similar psychological effects. In computer graphics, if you want to get "daylight" illumination for cheap, you simply use two lights - one white-to-yellowish directional and one bluish hemispherical: http://threejs.org/examples/webgl_lights_hemisphere.html http://threejs.org/examples/webgl_lights_hemisphere.html You only compute expensive scattering if you need volumetric effects (e.g. god rays or atmospheric fog blueing things far away, on the order of at least hundreds of meters). But here for simple indoor lighting, you don't really need volumetric effects. You just need proper light color coming from roughly appropriate directions - one strong white-to-yellowish light (coming from uniform direction) that will cast hard shadows and one weaker bluish diffuse light (coming from many directions) that will cast soft shadows.
- agumonkey 11y agoCould you send me a screenshot, my IGP has no love for webgl.
- bd 11y agoSure, here are screenshots of that WebGL demo (final result, plus broken into lighting components): http://imgur.com/a/2fUmE http://imgur.com/a/2fUmE Real physical double-light would look better - this demo lacks ambient occlusion for hemispheric component (soft shadows in real world are free, in rendering they are expensive).
- haddr 11y agoCan LED bulbs already provide a light quality comparable with the light of the sun?
- cmurf 11y agoDepends on what you mean by comparable. LEDs (and CFLs) aren't blackbody radiators. It's possible with many fine tuned LEDs you can get a spectral power distribution approximate to that of the sun, but... for now it's expensive. And difficult to make consistent.
- knappe 11y agoLEDs are used to grow many varieties of coral, with a lot of success. The article below talks about many of the factors you have to consider when emulating sunlight. https://orphek.com/led-light-chose-aquarium/ https://orphek.com/led-light-chose-aquarium/
- deelowe 11y agoWhile nice and all, this is something totally different.