19 ms·
Rooms can be as bright as the outdoors
- iandanforth 7y agoI have an LED build-out that was inspired by the Lumenator (https://arbital.com/p/lumenators/ https://arbital.com/p/lumenators/). Since that post 1600 lumen A19 bulbs have gotten much cheaper and so I run 9 of those in a 3-fixture tree lamp with 4-way spliters. I also experimented with commercial string lights and ended up hanging one strand with around a dozen bulbs over an ikea pyramid coat rack behind a Japanese style paper screen and that made for a bright and beautiful standing lamp. I also found that having a timer/dimmer was a great way to wake up in the morning. Much better than any alarm, but if you don't sleep alone you need to get your partner on board. I highly recommend trying a build for yourself!
- asdf333 7y agoi have seen articles about excessive blue light from led bulbs being bad for your long term eyesight i wonder if this has similar problems
- Scoundreller 7y agoYou can choose the colour temperature you want. Go for 2500K if you prefer less blue light.
- galangalalgol 7y agoThe issue is that all white leds are made by shining a blue led at a yellow phosphor. Rhe blue and yellow balance to whatever temp you pick, but it is still a lot of blue.
- seddona 7y agoHere's a good selection of research papers https://www.bioshumanlight.com/research/ https://www.bioshumanlight.com/research/ . It seems like there might be some adverse effect due to the peak at the lower end of the blue spectrum. I'm waiting for the BIOS team to do a consumer product.
- knzhou 7y agoIt can't be much worse than being under the blue sky.
- nikofeyn 7y agothis comment makes no sense. even assuming these things are equal, no one is just out there staring at the sky for hours on end for the small percentage of time the sky is actually blue.
- knzhou 7y agoSo when you're at the beach, hiking, or driving on the highway, what are you looking at instead? The blue sky is going to be most of your field of view unless you just stare at the ground.
- ta0987 7y agoThe blue sky's spectrum doesn't have a giant spike like this: https://www.benkuhn.net/img/lux/ledspec.png https://www.benkuhn.net/img/lux/ledspec.png
- knzhou 7y agoYes it does! A giant spike in the blue region is literally what makes the sky blue in the first place. If there weren't such a spike the sky would be white. When you look up at the sky on a typical clear day, you're getting more blue light than almost any one of these indoor setups.
- ta0987 7y agoI see your point, I was thinking of daylight in general. But even the blue sky is not quite as spiky: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffuse_sky_radiation#/media/File:Spectrum_of_blue_sky.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffuse_sky_radiation#/media/F... If you look at 460-470 nm where the spike is in the LED spectrum, it's much lower in the blue sky spectrum. I think the concern is something about the relative amounts of blue light. Not sure what exactly but something like, the human perception of brightness and therefore the self protection of the eye is calibrated for natural light, so the pupil contraction, looking away, etc, is not done correctly in with that unnatural distribution. Anyway I don't know if that's a real effect, but that's what people (should) mean when they're talking about "too much blue".
- seltzered_ 7y agoWhen David Chapman's "You need more lumens" article came out (which is referenced in the original post), I was on the verge of building a similar setup but at some point read similar concerns on light therapy. Not necessarily effects on circadian rhythm, but retinal damage from staring close to the amount of light. From https://meaningness.com/metablog/sad-light-lumens https://meaningness.com/metablog/sad-light-lumens : "The clinical studies were done with 10,000 lux provided by a bank of fluorescent tubes in a box that directed most of the light forward. Very roughly, if you are a couple feet from a box like that, 1 lumen produces 1 lux." It'd be interesting to see studies that have these lighting setups but don't involve staring towards them. The setup that I'm happy enough with: a set of LIFX bulbs in normal light fixtures. They seem to put out more lumens (1100 lumens) than other color-changing led bulbs. If you don't want 'smart' lighting but still want the ability to change color temperature, Philips makes "SceneSwitch" lights (800 lumens) that will cycle color temperature based on turning on/off.
- upofadown 7y agoI use a bank of blue LEDs aimed up at a white ceiling for the winter so I spent some time looking into the question. I didn't find anything very definite or concerning. Note that there is a whole snake oil thing going on with blue light these days. Some of what we see about this stuff might be coming out of that particular industry.
- Scoundreller 7y ago> Isn’t this expensive to run? It draws about 2 kWh per day (assuming 8h of usage), which costs about $0.30 at typical rates. This is comparable to one day of a modern fridge or one load of laundry. Power is cheap, folks! But it will offset your other heat sources. If you live alone, you can treat it like a room heater and lower the temperature for the rest of your home. Since the bulb is radiating heat some degree of heat, you may be able to keep the temperature of the room you’re in lower without feeling cooler. The fan is a bummer though.
- morsch 7y ago2 kWh is kind of nuts. Yes, it's in the same order of magnitude than the fridge and washing machine, but those already tend to be the largest consumers of electricity in a household, unless you're doing cooling or heating with electrity. And a modern fridge suitable for 2 to 3 persons will be more like 0.5 kWh per day and a load of laundry is < 1 kWh.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 7y agoAnd if you're trying to light your whole house this way you may need three or four of these bulbs. I guess you'd just keep whichever is in the room you're in on though.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- xyzzyz 7y agoThree standard 60 W incandescent bulbs will draw just under 2 kWh in 10 hours, and not too long ago it was completely normal to have many more of these on at the same time.
- benkuhn 7y agoWhile LEDs do produce some waste heat, efficient ones convert 50%+ of the input power to visible light, so it's less than you might think (compare to ~10% for incandescents, iirc). The bulb I have doesn't have a perceptible effect on my room temperature (although I guess it probably does cause the thermostat to turn on a tiny bit less often).
- GuiA 7y agoEvery few years some company/research lab will claim they have a technology that’ll simulate sunlight coming through a window, but it still isn’t something one can buy. The moment we can buy eg a 3ft by 1ft panel that we can just mount on a wall and feels like an actual sunlit window for a few thousands dollars or so, interior design is likely going to get radically different. (And that’s not to mention the sci-fi dream of a screen that can simulate a window looking out on any landscape, but these are probably way further out)
- apinstein 7y agoWhen we were building out an office that only had a few windows I went looking for, and found one of these. Unfortunately it’s $60k instead of $2k. According to reviewers that saw it, it’s amazing. Apparently it uses some nanoscale material that produces (mimics?) Rayleigh scattering. https://www.vox.com/2015/2/18/8060673/skylight-artificial-light https://www.vox.com/2015/2/18/8060673/skylight-artificial-li...
- BenoitEssiambre 7y agoI don't think the trick is the Rayleigh scattering, I think it's the parallel rays. Notice how all the pictures have well defined shadows of parallel rays?
- raziel2701 7y agoI started to look into this and from a brief readings of the patents it seems that the magic sauce is Rayleigh scattering by shining an LED light onto a sandwich of two transparent panels and a solid layer of silica aerogel. I couldn't find the thickness of the aerogel layer, which will determine if you get more blue or red light out of the sandwich. It's quite ingenious, the aerogel consists of silica nanoparticles with a size distribution smaller than the wavelength of the light, leading to Rayleigh scattering to dominate. The non-uniformity of the aerogel structure is what gives it the more nuanced lighting, it lets a bit of yellow light, a bit of this and that, making a non-monochromatic source that resembles sunlight very well.
- Mizza 7y agoI'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.
- EdwardCoffin 7y agoCould you provide specs on this system and clarification on how much use you believe was too much?
- derefr 7y ago> 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", I would note that light-therapy lamps for SAD have clear instructions to not sit in front of them for more than an hour-or-so at a time. Your body really does just go on producing more dopamine as long as you're sitting there.
- copperx 7y agoThat sounds a bit crazy. Does that mean you get the effects of Adderall from a light?
- armagon 7y agoThis is great to see, for I've been wondering lately why being outdoors is more pleasant (in clement weather) than indoors. Is it the unpredictability? the humidity? the noises? the sunlight? In that same vein, I've wondered how to simulate outdoor conditions inside, especially something approximating more light, in part because I think a family-member is mildly susceptible to seasonal affective disorder. I can't wait to see what the author has to say.
- dan-robertson 7y agoI’ve also been wondering this lately. In particular if I’m feeling slightly ill, I feel much better outdoors. At least in my experience, it isn’t necessarily sunlight as I think it’s also better at night. And it isn’t super “fresh” air or hearing birdsong or the wind rustling through trees (positive things I associate with being outdoors) as I live in a city. I hadn’t thought about humidity. Currently my best guesses are: - a correlation between being outdoors and stood up and moving - colder temperature (but I guess in the summer when it’s not stifling it can be preferable to be out so maybe this is wrong) - some psychological/placebo effect - less CO2 in the air. I can’t really put any numbers to this hypothesis as I don’t have a meter.
- darkmighty 7y agoObligatory Tom Scott video on indoor CO2 levels: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Nh_vxpycEA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Nh_vxpycEA (or the studies themselves https://www.gwern.net/docs/co2/2015-stafford.pdf https://www.gwern.net/docs/co2/2015-stafford.pdf and others) I.e. I think air quality is likely a big factor. When it's windy and I get good airflow through my room it doesn't feel as different from outside. It's probably not only CO2, but also dust, VOCs, funghi, microorganisms, etc.
- Simon_says 7y agoMy guess is more sunlight, less CO2.
- simple_phrases 7y agoFurniture, flooring and carpeting contribute towards indoor air pollution. For example, glues used in laminate flooring can release formaldehyde into the air for decades at room temperature or warmer.
- skunkworker 7y agoI’ve recently started buying high CRI LEDs and I’ve noticed a difference in how the room looks and feels. The older LEDs while can be bright just aren’t bright in the same way.
- mangecoeur 7y ago> isn't this expensive to run comparing lighting to the consumption of a fridge, which is one of the most energy intensive appliances in an average house, is kinda ridiculous. Its like saying your lawn mower energy use is just fine because it consumes the same as your SUV. Tl;dr: 2kwh per day for a light is a LOT. A standard led light would consume about 5% of that.
- TheCoelacanth 7y agoThree incandescent light bulbs that would have been standard 10 years ago would consume as much energy while putting out far less light. It's not a crazy amount of energy, standard LED lights just use so little energy that it's hardly worth measuring.
- wyattpeak 7y agoHe states in monetary terms what it costs (30c a day), he's not obfuscating it. That it costs a lot more than a regular light is neither here nor there (and I think anyone reading would have already guessed that).
- ZoomZoomZoom 7y agoThe 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.
- ta0987 7y agoI've been looking at this, but it's not cheap: https://www.waveformlighting.com/high-cri-led-strip-lights https://www.waveformlighting.com/high-cri-led-strip-lights
- abakker 7y agoI’ve got 5 of these in my office. https://www.superbrightleds.com/moreinfo/industrial-led-lighting/60w-led-retrofit-bulb-for-hid-lamps-7200-lumens-250w-equivalent-metal-halide-e39-mogul-base-ballast-bypass-5000k4000k/4647/10374/?redirect_disc=0 https://www.superbrightleds.com/moreinfo/industrial-led-ligh.... They are fantastic. I have several more of the longer fluorescent replacements in my wood shop. More light is magnificently better for energy and productivity in pretty much all environments. I would still prefer skylights to bulbs, but these are a good solution for dark rooms.
- spectramax 7y agoHave you checked the CRI? Its not bad but not great either - 84 as per the specs. There are a lot of Chinese cheap LED fixtures available on Amazon and no one seems to care about the CRI - it defines how colors appear in your room.
- ComputerGuru 7y agoCRI is the real key. A lot of manufacturers have cut back on quality in the war over pricing. Philips had the very best consumer LEDs then started pushing their “SlimStyle” garbage with a CRI of barely 75. Amazon is littered with products advertising CRI “over 90” but in reality are probably barely breaking 80.
- rococode 7y agoWhat's the effect of different CRI on humans? I'm curious what the difference is between good and bad CRI, and if a person would be able to notice it.
- ComputerGuru 7y agoI don’t know about physiologically but perceptually it feels dimmer and drearier. The room feels gloomy although there is certainly sufficient “quantity” of light. It’s almost like everything takes a few milliseconds longer to resolve. That, of course, is apart from the actual being unable to see certain shades of color and the spectrum being skewed one way or the other.
- keyle 7y agoMany offices, mostly in places like Amsterdam, Paris etc. in art-deco building, take pride in the amount of natural light they're pumping in the office. With mirrors and sunroofs (with sails as shade) and a few plants, you can really give a beautiful, open air feeling to your office. This, feels like crutches. edit: there is something to be said about starting an hour earlier and finishing an hour earlier if the sunset is early. It may be a good idea to live with the natural rhythm of the earth rather than some clock on the wall.
- Deimorz 7y agoThe second sentence of the article explains that he's trying to figure this out because the sun sets in Boston at 4:15 PM now.
- taurath 7y agoWhen it gets dark by 3:30pm and there’s so much cloud cover it never gets past dusk, you’ll appreciate the crutches. Biggest downside to living in seattle atm.
- Symbiote 7y agoYou exaggerate. Seattle looks bright compared to half of Europe. Compare the sunset times with London, Copenhagen, Oslo. You had 1½ hours more daylight today than Copenhagen.
- taurath 7y agoCompared to Copenhagen sure. I’m from California - the lack of daylight is not something I’m used to at all.
- egypturnash 7y agoUgh yeah I wanted to kill myself more and more every year I spent in Seattle. Moved somewhere sunnier and that urge just vanished.
- 7y ago
- ferros 7y agoI always feel better with bright lights and have considered trying something like this before, however two things always stop me. 1) Concerns about eye damage. 2) Concerns about skin damage.
- mathnode 7y agoIt's a lovely article; in substance and style. I purchased a very cheap (£50) win10 tablet a few years ago, and content like this makes me very happy.
- philip1209 7y agoI have a one-person office with glass walls in a coworking space. I've been looking for a lighting option that could possibly go above or below my monitor. I like the bulbs in this article, but I would prefer something directional so that I don't disturb my neighbors. Any suggestions?
- benkuhn 7y agoIf a 120-degree cone is good enough for you, try searching for "high bay lights"? E.g.: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=high+bay+lights https://www.amazon.com/s?k=high+bay+lights If you're willing to pay more for much better color rendering than mine, my coworker got excited about these: https://store.yujiintl.com/collections/high-cri-led-lights/products/high-cri-95-high-bay-ufo-led-light-pack-1pcs https://store.yujiintl.com/collections/high-cri-led-lights/p... Note that it's 1/3 the lumens of my corn bulb, but the smaller angle means the lux may be about the same (or you might need more--I haven't tried these).
- Marsymars 7y agoI'm not quite following - which direction do you want the light to shine? I've got bias light setups at both my home and office with bulbs behind my monitor shining at the wall.
- logicallee 7y agoThis is a pretty big claim: >The effect was huge: I became dramatically more productive between 3:30pm and whenever I turned off the light. Instead of having a strong urge to stop working whenever it got dark out, I was able to keep working my normal summer schedule, stopping just before dinner. I estimate the lamp bought me between half an hour and two hours a day, depending on how overcast it was. Does anyone know if people really do become "dramatically more productive"? It should be something that could be tested...
- ijiiijji1 7y agoI got some cheap-o Feit LED 4000K lights for a dining room table chandelier. It was way too bright, had take out 3 out of 6 to make it tolerable. I also converted my mom's house from incandescent (she was a hold-out) to LEDs, and her electric bill went way, way down.
- BenoitEssiambre 7y agoThe corn cob bulbs are very hard on the eyes unless you have some kind of diffuser. I found a better solution is a 1 to 7 bulb splitter with 7 150W equivalent bulbs for a total of about 15000 lumens. https://www.amazon.com/8T8-Splitter-Standard-Converter-Commercial/dp/B06ZZ6RY4H/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=8T8+E26+E27+7+in+1+LED+Light+Bulbs+Socket+Adapter+Splitter%2C+Standard+Lamp+Holder+Base+Converter+for+Home+Commercial&qid=1574988239&sr=8-1 https://www.amazon.com/8T8-Splitter-Standard-Converter-Comme... I'd be curious trying a spotlight (something like this: https://www.amazon.com/Primelux-8-inch-14400-Lumens-Driving/dp/B01GZST326/ref=sr_1_4?keywords=spotlight+jeep&qid=1574988540&sr=8-4 https://www.amazon.com/Primelux-8-inch-14400-Lumens-Driving/...) that is farther away from me. The parallel rays of a spotlight would probably look and feel more sun like compared to the radial rays of normal bulbs.
- Tepix 7y agoI was thinking about getting this myself, too. I looked at dozens of corn cob light bulbs on eBay and AliExpress and found none with a CRI of 90 Ra or better. In Germany you can buy cheap 13W E27 LED light bulbs at Aldi every January with 95+Ra.
- codingdave 7y ago> The lamp flickers when other current-hungry appliances turn on That should not happen. There is likely a problem somewhere in the electrical system. We used to have similar problems in our home, hired an electrician to help track it down... they gave our home a clean bill of health, but called the city... long story short, they found a problem in a transformer a couple blocks away from us. It had been impacting many homes, and they were shocked nobody had call it in as a problem before us. But apparently, everyone just thought, "Oh, flickers are normal when appliances kick on, right?"
- saagarjha 7y agoIs it not? I thought the motors inside of them caused that to happen?
- codingdave 7y agoNot according to the electricians who fixed it for my neighborhood.
- taneq 7y agoYes 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.
- kazinator 7y agoIt 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.
- taneq 7y agoOn 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.
- wheels 7y agoI 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 hard in moving from where I'm from (southern Texas) to Michigan (for college) and then to Berlin (for the last 14 years). Right now, in Berlin, which is approximately as far north as Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, North America's northernmost large city, the sun sets before 4:00 p.m. I usually try to spend a month of winter closer to the equator to keep my productivity levels and spirits up. Between the seasonal adjustment (where the sunset time swings by a full 7 hours in Berlin) and my sleep weirdo-ness, I've also come to love me some artificial-sun-level lighting. I tend towards 400-500 watt halogen bulbs. I have an up-firing light of approximately that wattage in every room of my home. A question for other folks that compensate sunlight with artificial lighting: Do LEDs really work for you? I'm a wanna-be hippie, and I'd love to use energy efficient bulbs and have tried every generation of them, but the light just doesn't do it for me. I keep going back to halogen as the sweet-spot between black-body radiation and energy efficiency. I can immediately spot the difference between an LED or CFL and incandescent bulb. I've had some success in mixing them in about 50/50 ratios. They've already been banned for sale in the EU, but I have a stockpile that will last me a decade in a pinch. Does anyone else struggle with the light quality from modern lighting?
- benkuhn 7y agoHave 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/products/high-cri-95-high-bay-ufo-led-light-pack-1pcs https://store.yujiintl.com/collections/high-cri-led-lights/p...
- wheels 7y agoHmm, 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).
- cryptozeus 7y agoAny recommendations for spotlight table lamp in the office ? Looking for something when studying or working with room lights off and have only table lamp on for focus.
- Marsymars 7y agoKind of depends if you want something with integrated LED, something where you can screw in your own bulb, controls for dimming, what type of bulb, etc. Personally I like the Ikea Forsa.
- derefr 7y ago> 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 ancestors spent their days doing? Consider: many humans were savannah persistence-hunters; but many humans were also jungle and arboreal-forest gatherers. And either way, we probably liked to find trees to climb and use as protection, when we could (as chimps do.) So, given that, are human brains calibrated for "sun-baked African plains" daytime brightness, or "under a forest canopy" daytime brightness, or somewhere in between?
- muzani 7y agoIt 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.
- honr 7y agoI'm not sure about the genetics of it (none of my family members seem to agree with me), but I also perform computer tasks far better in a dim light. A friend of me, who is also a night-owl, has the theory that when we get exposed to daylight, our cavemen heritage's natural reaction is to feel like going hunting/food gathering. While I don't buy the argument verbatim, I feel more like doing outdoor/physical activities on sunny days.
- aasasd 7y agoI've been wondering the same about ‘normal’ levels of activity. Pretty sure most of us are horribly motion-deprived by the standards of hunters or gatherers. But then again, presumably someone also was staying behind at home, and I don't remember any folk wisdom saying housekeepers are all dystrophic.
- asdf21 7y agoI mean, I think most of us spent a lot of generations inside caves, didn't we? I think we adapted.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- hereme888 7y agoI'm planning to move to northern Alaska in a few years, so this information is very welcome. I know I will need a setup against S.A.D. because it's very real up there. If I get 4 of the 120 watt fanless bulbs, the daily cost of the bulbs and running them 8 hrs/day (assuming 30,000 lifespan) would cost only ~$0.29/day. That's an easy choice against SAD.
- kragen 7y agoThere are a bunch of calculations about this in Dercuano, in particular based on indoor-growing setups, but with a chair in them instead of a plant pot. It turns out that fluorescent tubes or especially halogen bulbs are cheaper than LEDs, and at the small scale of a desk and chair, the extra energy is affordable. One big problem for hackers is that very few screens are readable even in 10klux, let alone 100klux direct sunlight (although that has the disadvantage of burning you).
- exikyut 7y agoWhat about transreflective displays? Annoyingly I've still not seen one IRL. They go black and white, apparently, but are still 100% legible.
- kragen 7y agoI've been positively impressed with the readability of OLPC XOs in sunlight, which I think are what you're talking about. It's too bad they weren't willing to consider a capitalist rather than communist model for making them available; I think they would have been popular. I think there are also color transflective displays but I've only seen them in photos. E-ink displays are even better than the XO, and machines with them are much more easily available, but most of them only come in the surveillance-capitalist hood-welded-shut model. They use orders of magnitude less energy than transflective LCDs for some usage patterns, but refresh slowly.
- jasonmp85 7y agoOh my god this is the most insane description of OLPC I’ve ever seen. Not “neoliberal private-public partnership bull crap” but somehow “communist”? Lololol.
- kragen 7y agoThe only way they would sell you an XO was if you were going to give one to every kid in the country as part of a centrally planned education policy. While this could have been very effective, there's no denying that it's structurally much more Lenin or Castro than Pinochet, Eisenhower, or even Yew. If that's not obvious to you, it says more about your knowledge of political ideas than about my mental health; perhaps you only know “communist” as a pejorative due to US jingoism? A capitalist approach to the problem would have stopped them from failing as completely as they did but also would have eliminated the possibility of the far-reaching transformation of education they were seeking to impose.
- therealdrag0 7y agoI like natural light, but office ceiling lights hurt my eyes.
- DenisM 7y agoAnyone knows a decent and inexpensive way to measure CRI? It seems like a simple enough problem with a prism and a monochrome CCD sensor, yet the cheapest device I can find is over a thousand dollars.
- tzs 7y agoI wonder if it would be possible to write an app that could do it using the camera in a smart phone? The idea is that you would take some photos of some reference objects of known color under sunlight, and then take photos of those same objects under the lighting you are testing, and then figure out from the differences in the photos what the CRI must be. The reference objects could be well known, easy to obtain household items, like a Pepsi can, a plastic bottle of Tide detergent, or box of Arm & Hammer baking soda. If the app included a reasonably good sized database of such items, there would be a good chance an average user would have a suitable set of color references already on hand.
- DenisM 7y agoI'm afraid that phone camera sensors are filtered to R/G/B, so a strong monochromatic orange, for example, may end up under-represented or even absent in the captured image, and will likely be hard to distinguish from an overlap between red and green. Maybe modern image processing techniques can figure it out, but this seems like a huge problem to me.
- gHosts 7y agoA colleague points out that the COB rather than SMD based lights have a better spectrum.
- anotheryou 7y agowhy though?
- mmaunder 7y agoLight temp is mentioned. It's worth looking at CRI which gives you an indication of how much of the spectrum is represented. E.g. 18,000 watt HMI lights for film are tungsten (3200k) and have a CRI of 99 which is insanely good. But they're 18000 watts. Many high output low watt LEDs have horrendous gaps in the spectrum. Unfortunately to test CRI you need a $1500 color meter. I'm lucky enough to have one and access to a range of film lights and it's crazy how much CRI varies and the horrendous gaps in the spectrum for some lights.
- taneq 7y agoBut I don't want my office to be as bright as the outdoors. I want it to be dark.
- svd4anything 7y agoI’m the same. It is very interesting how people have radically different experiences with light. I feel the best in winter with cloudy dark days. My wife is completely opposite and so are most people it seems, they feel good in sunlight. I’m afraid of it and the summer heat.
- jmartrican 7y agoI use a flood-light bulb in my torch floor lamp (pointing up to the ceiling). This fills the space with a lot of light without having a bright spot that cannot be stared at.
- amluto 7y ago> But as of recently, it’s totally practical to fill your entire house with light that’s as bright as full daylight. If you actually get your house as bright as sunlight, that means you have ~1kW / m2 of light in your house, which is impractical no matter how cheap and efficient LEDs get.
- Const-me 7y agoIt's 445W/m^2. More than half of these 1kW is infrared.
- herf 7y ago(Michael from f.lux): this kind of thing is necessary for most buildings, because otherwise people don't get a "day" signal when they spend time indoors. Most of us spend >90% of our time inside. However, we shouldn't mess with light levels like these (or even somewhat lower ones) without some limits, and the main one is some automatic timing to turn things down after it gets too late. Otherwise you will find yourself staying at work later and later each day, and it's no accident. Our clocks don't work that well with more than about a 14-15 hour photoperiod ("day"), so spending 18 hours under 5000 lux will screw up your overall rhythms, making your internal day longer than 24 hours and reducing your sleep. This is considerably worse if you're a natural night owl - it will make you later, faster. The myth of electric lighting is that we can live in a permanent summer and turn the wintertime into summer, but there are important seasonal questions that we should think about too. For instance, cancer progresses much faster in summer than in winter [edit: cancer progresses much faster in constant light: winter vs. summer is complicated], and the winter schedule even engages a different part of the central clock in your brain than the summer schedule does. There are some important things going on here, which we've mostly tried to remove from our environments. Knowing how the body works and having the capability to change it really do need to evolve in parallel - I think there is way more capability than knowledge right now.
- cracker_jacks 7y ago> cancer progresses much faster in summer than in winter Can you point me to a reference for this? This pattern is surprising and I would like to learn more about this.
- herf 7y agoI think the seasonality data may be mixed, with more diagnoses in the fall and spring in human subjects studies. This particular claim was a hypothesis from Richard Stevens, with some experimental work that shows rapid cancer growth under constant light (in human tumors implanted in mice) by Blask (2002, 2005): http://www.nel.edu/userfiles/articlesnew/NEL230802A03.pdf http://www.nel.edu/userfiles/articlesnew/NEL230802A03.pdf The main mechanism in the Blask work is thought to be suppression of melatonin.
- boltzmann_brain 7y agoWeird, it's complete opposite for me: I only focus well when it's dark.
- Springtime 7y agoI'm most pleased with the page's non-Javascript based image comparison slider. Nice one.
- icebraining 7y agoDoesn't work for me :/
- pimlottc 7y agoIt didn’t work for me on mobile, and only in a weirdly rendered way on tablet. I would have liked it if there were just plain image links available.
- milani 7y ago> Isn’t using this much power bad for the planet? Coal has a carbon intensity of about 1 kg CO2e / kWh (source), so one coal-powered lamp-day produces 2 kg, approximately one-third to one-half of a cheeseburger (source). I don't think the author gets a cheeseburger everyday! And even if it is true, it adds on top of the cheeseburger.
- acqq 7y agoAnd he starts with incomplete data, as only 40% of the energy in coal is converted to electrical energy. Then, from that 40%, additional 5% are lost in transmission and distribution, so what reaches his flat is around 38% of that, or 2.6 kg of coal per kWh. So one his coal powered lamp day is already, assuming his other factors are correct, around 5 kg of coal(!) or almost 2 tonnes of coal per year! Which is a huge footprint. Imagine that the same guy would have to just unload that much coal, delivered to his house, once a year, and to feed his lamp every day, would he still consider it "nothing"? Burning hydrocarbons roughly produces 3 times more CO2 in mass, resulting in 15 kg of CO2 for one of his "lamp days". In volume, it's even more easy to see the size of that all: a kg of CO2 has volume of more than half of cubic meter (0.56 actually), so his lamp day produces more than 8 cubic meters of pure CO2 per day or 3000 cubic meters of pure CO2 per year. Enough to fill 25 European city flats with pure CO2 (otherwise, in atmosphere there's only 0.04% of CO2 -- that's 400 ppm talked about here: https://e360.yale.edu/features/how-the-world-passed-a-carbon-threshold-400ppm-and-why-it-matters https://e360.yale.edu/features/how-the-world-passed-a-carbon... ). "But the atmosphere is huge" -- yes it is, but still the change of CO2 concentration affects us. There is an experiment that demonstrates the effect with ink: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81FHVrXgzuA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81FHVrXgzuA We don't see CO2 with our eyes, but the molecules of it efficiently block the parts of heat emissions (it is just electromagnetic radiation, just like visible light is) which would cool our part of the atmosphere. So the heat around us increases, just like it's warmer under a blanket (we are practically under always thicker blanket, and we add to it with our actions, just like adding the droplets of ink in that video). Everybody should understand that much.
- flashman 7y agoplease do a follow-up on the affiliate revenue from this article
- doctorpangloss 7y ago> For instance, cancer progresses much faster in summer than in winter [edit: cancer progresses much faster in constant light: winter vs. summer is complicated] I don't know you, you make a very successful app that people really swear by. I have no qualms about people using f.lux, if you want to take your $4,600 laptop and $1,400 phone, on which people spent decades perfecting color reproduction, and you're paying $13/mo for Netflix to watch shows with multi-million dollar budgets and dedicated colorists, and you start watching Orange is the New Black and you make it yellow, that's your prerogative. So you don't need my opinions, so don't downvote just because you like f.lux and hate opinions. Why did you have to say anything about cancer at all? What's your personal line for, "I'm not sure" versus "This is actionable evidence for change in behavior?" There is no clinically controlled evidence showing that interventional blue light, the kind that would be emitted from an LED, causes significant change in sleep quality with measures like minutes spent sleeping or an insomnia scoring system. I found this by searching "blue light" and "sleep" in clinicaltrials.gov. There are 4 or 5 studies on the matter, all negative results. The best way to interpret this evidence is that blue light will not make you sleep less or experience insomnia more. Indeed, if you consulted a doctor, you might learn that waking up too early is the most common sleep disturbance in adults. This interferes with their daily lives, by causing them to feel drowsy in the middle of the day. That's why blue light is typically investigated as an intervention: to get people to fall asleep and wake up later. It just doesn't turn out to work for that. Its absence is not causing people to fall asleep earlier either.
- jiofih 7y agoSomeone might not hate opinions, just not appreciate the condescending tone in yours. You can still rely on the color reproduction of your expensive device when it matters.
- errantspark 7y agoI'm just commenting to save what might be the saltiest comment I've ever seen on HN. I bet you're very fun at parties.
- Tenoke 7y ago
- sveme 7y agoAny suggestion for smart light bulbs that work without the cloud? Don‘t want to have the server shut down in five years when the bulb still has 15 years in it.
- flo123456 7y agoBasically anything that can be flashed with open firmeware, such as Tasmota (https://github.com/arendst/Tasmota/wiki/Prerequisites https://github.com/arendst/Tasmota/wiki/Prerequisites) plus a local instance of Homeassistant. It needs a bit of work and sometimes soldering skills, but some devices can be flashed without soldering and in general it’s not too hard to do. :-)
- fsh 7y agoPretty much any zigbee bulb (Philips Hue, Osram Lightify, Ikea Tradfri, and tons of chinese brands) can be controlled with a cheap CC2231 USB dongle (~20€ including programmer for flashing) and zigbee2mqtt. I use homeassistant for a nice UI and Node-RED for automation.
- Jaruzel 7y ago> Isn’t 5000K very “cold” light? “Cold” lights (above 2700k, the typical incandescent color temperature) have a bad reputation, but 5000K is actually less cold than the sun (which is about 5500-6500K) I don't think the author is taking into account that a lot of the blue spectrum from sunlight is scattered in the atmosphere resulting in a much 'warmer' light hitting us.
- jamilbk 7y agoThe main limitation office workers face when working in sunlit environments is the reflective glare on most, if not all, computer displays. I conjecture if/when e-ink displays match conventional LCDs in response time and resolution there will be a movement towards “outdoor offices”. Imagine being able to work productively in a garden, atrium, sun room, or any other natural outdoor environment. Many of the pitfalls of indoor, fluorescent lighting would be diminished. The Bay Area and its relatively fantastic weather would be fully realized as a perk to tech workers.
- eggie 7y ago> I conjecture if/when e-ink displays match conventional LCDs in response time and resolution there will be a movement towards “outdoor offices”. I think you're right. Working outdoors with a laptop is already better than indoors. It'd be easier with e-ink.
- buzzkillington 7y ago> The Bay Area and its relatively fantastic weather would be fully realized as a perk to tech workers. I built a Linux box with an rpi3 I had lying around and a boox max3 I got. So far working out doors: + Insects: you have no idea how many seem to come out of no where just to annoy you. + Sun: you need sun screen even on overcast days. I look like an overripe tomato. + Rain: when you least expect it one tiny cloud will go past and drop enough rain to soak you and any exposed electronics. + Children: loud and obnoxious, seem to be everywhere at any time. + Homeless: turns out they really like parks and assume you're one of them if you're there for more than 30 minutes. There's probably more but those are the things I had to deal with yesterday. Today I just sat on my balcony instead. Sunlight is nice, but there's a reason why people have been building shelters for millennia.
- keenmaster 7y agoAnother limitation is battery technology, but that's changing. I have a 20K mAh USB C power bank and it's made me more mobile. It can almost fully recharge my laptop or recharge my phone 6 times before needing to be recharged.
- Wistar 7y agoMitsubishi's synthetic-light "windows" announced last year appear to be pretty spectacular. I want one. https://www.bbc.com/news/av/technology-45827812/mitsubishi-windows-shine-alarmingly-realistic-fake-sunlight https://www.bbc.com/news/av/technology-45827812/mitsubishi-w... https://www.mitsubishielectric.com/news/2018/0927.html https://www.mitsubishielectric.com/news/2018/0927.html
- anotherwebdev 7y agoI built my own lamp for that and it cost me roughly the same. It's best to use metal-halide lamps as their spectrum is very close to the Sun's. It's important to get one with a uv filter though.
- m0zg 7y agoI've kind of intuitively gravitated towards this ever since energy efficient bulbs started becoming popular. Instead of buying light bulbs to save energy per se, I've been buying the highest lumen efficient light bulbs in a given form factor and color temperature. I prefer 3000K light indoors, and daylight for working lights. My desk lamps have 100W equivalent daylight "high CRI" light bulbs. My house lights are basically the highest lumen lights available in each form factor be it candelabra, "regular" or "fake luminescent". The light fixtures that do not have light bulbs per se are the highest possible lumen rating as well. I figure I'm spending less money anyway, might as well have more light. Unfortunately R30 flood lights aren't generally available in power rating equivalents beyond 75W incandescent. If some marketing person from e.g. Osram, Cree or Philips is reading this, could you guys make 150W equivalent R30 flood light? Charge pretty penny for it, too. I'll pay. I want punishing light levels in my kitchen/bar area.
- jsilence 7y agoIt is possible to recycle old LCD monitors into articficial windows that have a very real feel to them. The diffraction lenses for the backlight direct the light in a way that makes it appear sun like. Of course this is only about the direction and not about the spectrum, but it might be possible to find LED strips with a high CRI. Any feedback would be appreciated. DIY directions on YT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JrqH2oOTK4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JrqH2oOTK4
- NKCSS 7y agoCame here to recommend the same thing, and I think it's an even better solution, as it makes the light appear to come from further away and the diffusion prevents bright spots.
- rickymetz2 7y agoGreat video. The light produced is so soft and convincing. Do you know of any consumer version for sale? It feels like there should be a product offering with how little changes need to be made to convert a tv or laptop screen
- reportgunner 7y agoRooms can even be brighter than the outdoors you know.
- mcv 7y agoI don't really need this, but if I did, the fan would probably be a deal-breaker for me. Instead, I'd spread this out of multiple weaker light sources. That would spread the light out more, spread the heat of course, and probably also make it easier to tune it to exactly the light level you want. I do understand the desire to have daylight-level lighting in your house. It's a shame it takes so much power.
- b0rsuk 7y agoI can think of one more potential downside: light polution is bad enough already. In the author's case, 8x higher lux values. Insect population in Germany has dropped by about 75% since the 70's. A recent The Guardian article names light polution a key factor. In principle, it's possible to shield your windows with thick curtains, but I know many people won't bother, some will openly boast them, and it may even lead to more of them being hung outside when people see how great they are.
- datenwolf 7y agoI'm a little bit worried about the amount of <450nm blue light emitted by these things. Even if they look warm white, there still might be a very prominent blue peak. Blue light at about 420…430nm has a very prominent retinal phototoxicity, and prolonged exposure can lead to loss of vision.
- jan6 7y agotext: fluorescent vs. an incandescent the graph below: fluorescent vs. _LED_ which is it? ;)
- scotty79 7y agoI'm building my own bright lamp recently. I bought 20 Philips bulbs, 1500 lumens each. I attached sockets for them in 5 by 4 array to a 40 by 40 cm board. I'm gonna attach the board to the ceiling and hang transparent ikea kitchen cabinet lining below the lamp so it spreads light a bit so it's not too bright to look directly at it. It takes about 250W and gives over 10 lux from 1m. My current setup are two 100W led reflectors pointed at the white ceiling. Thet give over 200 lux at my desk but are very greenish. It shows up on the camera (with any whitebalance) and is even slightly visible to the naked eye. New lamp should be significant upgrade in terms of colors and light strength. Total cost is around 50$ because I bought lightbulbs very cheap and used cheapest available sockets, plus few hours of very relaxing work. Reflectors were even cheaper. Just 20$ and hanging them was less than an hour.
- nnq 7y ago> Instead of having a strong urge to stop working whenever it got dark out Lots of us have the opposite urge! My theory is that darkness induces a combination of mild-depression and subliminal sort-of-pleasant fear that HELPS us ADD-iacs focus waaaay better especially on tasks like coding and debugging. PLEASE never use OPs conclusions when designing public spaces, this would kill the productivity of people like me!
- dghughes 7y ago> ...that HELPS us ADD-iacs focus waaaay better That's interesting since I too can only really focus at night or late evening. I knew someone with ADHD and I could see some glimpses of me in their behaviour.
- nnq 7y agoNot sure if it generalizes. And if it does, not sure if it does do all ADDs: I'm ADHD without the Hyperactive component, subclinical, ADD or (ADHD-PI or Inattentive-ADHD more precisely). Or with the H component purely mental/internal, which kind of sucks because you get the "benefits" of ADHD plus a higher propensity to slide into an unhealthy ultra-sedentary lifestyle.
- dghughes 7y agoThat too seems familiar. I'm not sure if I am hyper or not I used to be but I think I outgrew it finally but it took decades. The ultra-sedentary lifestyle seems very accurate. I make a plan for example study for my CCNA and here I am six month later finally doing it. This is with daily reminders to myself, set alarms, notes, collecting study material etc. not just thinking but some prep. And when I am in the zone I tend to overdo it often way too much detail. Brevity is not my forté. Self medicating with caffeine seemed to be working it would help me focus even during the day. But I think it contributed to my fatty liver I never had it before or after my energy drink addiction. Now it's one cup of coffee per day max.
- 7y ago
- nnq 7y ago> stop working whenever it got dark out Also, this might be a good urge - just stop working and stop trying to use light to squeeze every ounce of productivity from yourself until you burn out!
- dghughes 7y ago> Why doesn’t everybody do this?! Because I am more productive when it is dark or overcast. I get nothing done when it's bright. I struggle to focus during the day and become more productive when it is dark.
- paulmendoza 7y agoI put a bulb like this only in my office. Has helped tremendously although you notice the difference in light color between it and the other lights in the house right away.
- JohnJamesRambo 7y agoActual outdoors light levels are much higher than 600 lux. More like 50,000-100,000 lux. https://www.royalqueenseeds.com/blog-how-to-use-a-lux-meter-to-increase-your-cannabis-yields-n977 https://www.royalqueenseeds.com/blog-how-to-use-a-lux-meter-...
- RoboTeddy 7y agoAnyone know a way to set up lighting that is (tiers of priority): Tier 1: * high-CRI * high-lumen * dimmable, and can be set up to turn on slowly in the morning Tier 2: * not glary Tier 3: * easy to install * inexpensive * power efficient
- graeme 7y agoI'm in Canada, so the bulb he selected isn't readily available. Anyone found a good one with high CRI? Also, it's not clear to me how important the watts/lumens are in a single bulb vs. multiple. If I can only find 100W/6000 lumen bulbs, are three of those the same as one higher wattage bulb with 18000 lumens?
- ogre_codes 7y agoDo you really need a single mega-light? Seems to me for a lot of situations having more dispersed lamps would work better and light a room more evenly and allows more fine tuning of light levels.
- quartus 7y agoThis immediately reminded me of the scene from Silicon Valley where Gwart is working directly in front of an extremely powerful light, which Jared rushes to shut off because it's too bright
- 0x262d 7y agothis is a cool idea, but, the "is this bad for the planet" question seems like it's saying it isn't, but the comparison seems to indicate that actually it's quite bad for the planet, like very bad as far as lifestyle choices go? not to say that alone makes it a bad idea to do, but that a sane society would make buildings that capture and use more sunlight from the actual sky.