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Ask HN: Why are there so few artificial sunlight or artificial window products?

• napolux 4y ago
  Glad I live in Italy and I just need windows.
• scrivna 4y ago
  I tried the first video, I bought a broken old tv off marketplace… guess what… the lens didn’t work and I had no use for the LEDs… so I had a broken old tv I’d ripped apart that I had to dispose of and some new LEDs I wasted money on… I guess it’s harder than they make it out to be
  • alanbernstein 4y ago
    That sucks, but I'd definitely aim to get a broken tv for free, it's remarkably easy.
• j45 4y ago
  https://g2voptics.com/ https://g2voptics.com/ might interest you
  • stevage 4y ago
    What an amazing niche!
• navmed 4y ago
  Is it though? I find that almost every American I know closes the blinds - the exact opposite of what you're describing.
  • birdyrooster 4y ago
    Right and when we aren’t, we are exposing the window because it’s open to ventilate for fresh air. However, I just considered many people are in high rises where privacy isn’t as serious of a concern and so you might have less window treatments in that case.
  • jimmygrapes 4y ago
    I close my blinds at home because if I don't then I get people peering in, either curiously or with malintent; I have had my apartments broken into more than once before (thankfully while I was away), presumably because someone saw valuables. Granted, this happened in those "bad neighborhoods" you're recommended to avoid when you can afford to, but still. Ain't risking it, even though I've run out of valuables.
    • bookofjoe 4y ago
      https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/dutch-windows/index.html https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/dutch-windows/index.html
      • jimmygrapes 4y ago
        Sounds lovely to me. I sure do wish I lived in a high trust society surrounded by people culturally compatible. Alas, as an American, diversity is both our strength and our weakness. Good on the Dutch though, current and historical struggles notwithstanding.
• nathanaldensr 4y ago
  Mimicking sunlight means providing all the wavelengths, including the harmful ones like UV. Some people may not be aware that e.g. lights[1] prescribed for Seasonal Affective Disorder can actually cause burns if used for too long. They are supposed to be used for short periods only. The FDA does not regulate light boxes, so caveat emptor. [1] https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/seasonal-affective-disorder/in-depth/seasonal-affective-disorder-treatment/art-20048298 https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/seasonal-affe...
  • ilaksh 4y ago
    The thing is that UV is harmful if overexposed but also harmful when there isn't exposure. Humans require a certain amount of UV to be healthy. So I think what is needed is actually carefully dosing with full spectrum.
  • ShamelessC 4y ago
    > The [government] does not regulate [blank], so caveat emptor. I find this point of view so rude, tone deaf even. "caveat emptor" only applies if you personally believe humans are entirely responsible for their own actions and can't possibly be manipulated or scammed by others. That, or you think this is likely (and it is) but you simply don't care about these people and think that this is the market correcting for "dumb consumers". Or maybe you think the laws of the land define how we should behave to one another? Anything not made explicit by "the law" is thus meant to be ignored? Not your problem? I'm sorry, it's just the sort of thing some one who benefits from the lack of regulation would say. It sounds biased - like you're trying to justify some venture of your own that is also "unregulated, so caveat emptor". Let me guess, cryptocurrency enthusiast? Anyway I say all this because there _are_ better arguments against government regulation. But caveat emptor is just saying "fuck government regulation, it doesn't let me screw people over as much". You might convince more people if your do a bit of research (and maybe don't assume everyone simply agrees with caveat emptor - this is the tone deaf bit).
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
• ilaksh 4y ago
  One thing to note is that the most important benefits of sunlight actually come from (moderate) UV exposure, which is blocked by glass and not output by LCDs as far as I know. My own personal theory is that there is a health epidemic related to lack of sunlight exposure from most people being indoors. And so in my fantasy future cities that I build in my head, there are ways that actual natural light is delivered without being blocked by windows, such as carefully monitored full spectrum and/or UV lighting. Another related issue is the concept of a virtual window that you can see out of. I think this will also be a future trend, since windows increase heating requirements and again don't provide the key UV component of light. Also, for the majority of history, inexpensive cameras and displays did not exist. So what I suggest is virtual windows that are thin OLEDs and follow the person to give them a different virtualized view of outside. Or using some light field or multiview technology. Along with full spectrum lighting. And not entirely related but I think it would be best in most areas to standardize on airtight construction, mechanical ventilation and energy/heat recovery ventilators.
  • hinkley 4y ago
    UIUC campus has a building that looks like a collapsible drinking cup. Each floor is a ring. Each ring is about 2 offices wider than the previous ring. The center of the building is an atrium, and the void space is approximately an inverted ziggurat. All the inside offices have sky lights, the outside offices have windows facing out and down (due to the offices above. I’m told there are no offices without daylight in the building, but I’ve been to the basement and they must mean the above ground floors. I’m not sure how high you can build that or how difficult it is to heat, and it has lots of light but attenuated through windows which you were against. But I wonder if we could build a modern day Hanging Garden, where each floor has a balcony, and a series of skylights allow some light through into an atrium, or series of atriums, so those who choose to stay inside still get indirect light, and some tropical plants.
    • ilaksh 4y ago
      That would work great but I just feel that people should be informed that all of the UV is blocked by windows, and even though it's clear that too much UV is deadly over time, it's also clear that the tiny amounts that many people who spend almost all time indoors get is very insufficient. But if I am reading this then maybe those atriums would provide the full spectrum light. It sounds like a really good architectural concept.
• hinkley 4y ago
  Apparently part of the problem with convincing skylights is that the light has to be parallel to be believed. That’s tough to do without either reabsorbing a lot of the light you created, or creating a large box to contain the light source. One of the interesting DIY designs I’ve seen uses a surplus satellite dish, silvered, with an LED array at the focal point. The reflected light of the mirror is mostly parallel, but your light source is now 20+ inches deep. I spent some time instead thinking about indirect light, like an artificial clerestory. Never did build anything though. When I moved I had plenty of natural light so I stopped trying.
  • dexwiz 4y ago
    The technical term for this is collimated light. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collimated_beam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collimated_beam Most lights are point sources with radiating rays. But the sun is so far away it appears collimated.
    • Tade0 4y ago
      Taking into account that the sun's radius is much larger than Earth's - it actually is collimated.
  • laserlight 4y ago
    > satellite dish, silvered, with an LED array at the focal point An example from DIY Perks YouTube channel [0]. [0] Building an artificial sun that looks unbelievably realistic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bqBsHSwPgw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bqBsHSwPgw
    • hinkley 4y ago
      I forgot how complicated his solution ended up being. Also he seems to have lucked out that the cone of light from his LED was compatible with the mirror. Too narrow a beam would have made the window need to be smaller.
      • 4y ago
• atoav 4y ago
  One thing: most LEDs suck at mimicking daylight. The cheap ones are bad at delivering the full light spectrum. The higher end of LED is slowly getting there. The measurement one should be looking for there is CRI ("Color Rendering Index"). The sun has a CRI of 100. Any lightsource above 90 to 95 CRI is (to my experience) indistinguishable from daylight. The best stuff there currently is are (of course) the Skypanels by ARRI for laughable 6800 USD per panel (film equipment is expensive as usual). Blasting a 2.5 kW HMI lamp ("Hydrargyrum medium-arc iodide lamp") trough a window from the outside is a good emulation of daylight. So good in fact that the poor souls shooting films inside will have their bodies in confusion as they exit the room and realize in horror that it is dark outside. The electrical bill of anything emulating the sun is no joke tho.
  • korm 4y ago
    Very true, color rendering, or god forbid flicker, are the main culprits to me. Over the last few years a ton of players have entered the film lighting space, with many offerings exceeding Arri's color rendering for far cheaper. Yuji LEDs or iFootage for example make some of the most accurate lights at 98+ cri. The film industry will still go for Arris for other reasons, but at home we have lots of options nowadays. Amazon listings will always claim ridiculous cri numbers, try to find a 3rd party measurement. https://indiecinemaacademy.com/complete-led-color-database-cri-tlci-cqs-tm30-15 https://indiecinemaacademy.com/complete-led-color-database-c.... https://youtu.be/qCyKdIgRVTk https://youtu.be/qCyKdIgRVTk
    • xxs 4y ago
      >or god forbid flicker That's just terrible drivers - likely an unisolated AC with a single coil. Flicker is trivial to defeat sacrificing the power factor (just add filtering caps). Overall there is nothing hard about using constant driven high-freq (over 30KHz, so no sound interference, either) LEDs. Side note: in the days of home video calls, you can tell how many have terrible lights as the flicker is visible on the even camera.
      • dx034 4y ago
• pseudo0 4y ago
  This seems like the sort of idea that is perhaps well-intentioned but would rub many workers the wrong way, like the Amazon mindfulness pods [0]. Employees might wonder why they can't have 15 minutes to take a paid break in actual sunlight instead of getting a dystopian fake window. [0] - https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/amazon-mental-health-box-workers-b1855386.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/amazon-men...
  • marvin 4y ago
    Well, dystopian winter (October-March) in Scandinavia has many cities with no sunlight for weeks at a time due to latitude and weather, so some really good artificial lights would definitely be welcome.
    • nextlevelwizard 4y ago
      It isn't that bad. The area that is without sun for weeks is pretty small and there aren't many people living there, so trying to build a company to catch that market is suspicious at best. For rest of the country the main concern is the shorter days - meaning you can easily go to work before sun comes up and leave work just as sun is going down. But during working hours there is plenty of light even if the day is cloudy since snow is very reflective. I see the main problem with the designs OP posted that they are just LED panels mounted on a wall. You don't get the same feeling of being in the sun when the light is not directional. You might as well just have one of the "bright light lamps" on your desk that have been sold for decades to combat "sunlessness".
      • vladvasiliu 4y ago
        I don't know about Scandinavia, but even in Paris, France, there can be weeks during the winter when the sky is mostly covered, and you get next to no light. I used to live in an apartment with huge windows, west-oriented, and no other building close by, and I still went out and bought a big ass LED light for working from home in winter. It made a huge difference to my mood.
• deltasevennine 4y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bqBsHSwPgw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bqBsHSwPgw If you want one, you can build one following the video above. The result is quite stunning. I've never seen anything like it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JrqH2oOTK4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JrqH2oOTK4 The one above is an easier build that takes up less space.
  • stevage 4y ago
    I want one, but I really want to just buy it off the shelf. A lot of other projects taking my time and attention currently.
• mr_toad 4y ago
  Too much of a good thing? Natural light is really bright. Human eyes cope well, but our devices aren’t designed for it. It’s hard to read a screen outside.
• ayushgta 4y ago
  https://www.innerscene.com https://www.innerscene.com
• fanf2 4y ago
  Are you looking for something like a SAD lamp (light therapy for seasonal affective disorder)? Or something like my friends have: a couple of cheap and very bright LED flat panels mounted above their dining table, in a space that has little natural light?
• topkai22 4y ago
  I’m not sure where there is a large demand for natural light amongst people who both can’t get it otherwise and are in a position to do something about it. Every home I’ve had (including starter apartments and a basement bedroom) was well lit by natural light. Offices have been more problematic, but decision makers generally aren’t effected by it, almost universally having window offices. Factories (at least the few I’ve been at) are often heavily lit with natural light via skylights. That being said, there is probably a market in the higher end office design market and possibly for basements, like in the I like to make stuff video. I think the problem then is “how do I design around/with this product.” Designers and builders roughly know how to use existing lighting products. How do you utilize this artificial sunlight product in your lighting design. Those wall mounted led windows look cool, but I’d be super annoyed if my desk were facing them. The fresnel lens looks nice in that accent position, but if it got in people’s eyes or strained them it’s a problem. Finally, the two examples you showed are using stock led panels. As others have said, you can get some interesting effects from them, but I strongly suspect you’ll end up in the “uncanny valley” with that sort of lightning- the spectrum and consistency just isn’t quite right, the light doesn’t feel “warm” enough in the infrared, etc. Try it out- see if you can get a lighting setup you and others love. I suspect the product is restricted to the high end currently because it’s genuinely hard to get right in a way that doesn’t feel cheap or artificial. But I’d love to be proven wrong.
  • cycomanic 4y ago
    It seems like you don't live very far up north. In southern Sweden where I am we have less than 8h of daylight and I would love a sunlight. I've toyed with the idea of building one when I watched one of the many videos mentioned, but we live in an apartment with little room for it atm.
    • nicoburns 4y ago
      Yes, even in the south of the UK this is an issue. I imagine it's worse in Sweden!
  • stevage 4y ago
    > I’m not sure where there is a large demand for natural light amongst people who both can’t get it otherwise and are in a position to do something about it. Owners of old houses, particularly in inner urban areas. Lots of old houses had small windows, to keep heat in. Or have been overshadowed by taller buildings being built nearby. Or both. Source: am one. > think the problem then is “how do I design around/with this product.” Designers and builders roughly know how to use existing lighting products. How do you utilize this artificial sunlight product in your lighting design. Those wall mounted led windows look cool, but I’d be super annoyed if my desk were facing them. The fresnel lens looks nice in that accent position, but if it got in people’s eyes or strained them it’s a problem. I'm imagining the market is people improving an existing room, perhaps even renters. So, designers and builders wouldn't really come into it.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• Animats 4y ago
  > So, why can't I find many such products for sale? [1][2] The big market for these things is hospitals. They operate 24/7, and tend to have many windowless interior rooms. Both patients and staff lose circadian rhythm in such timeless environments. [1] https://www.coelux.com/ https://www.coelux.com/ [2] https://www.apartmenttherapy.com/artificial-window-36758108 https://www.apartmenttherapy.com/artificial-window-36758108
• gnopgnip 4y ago
  There is an alternative that is free, going outside more, opening the blinds, taking a break mid day. I agree there is a niche for people that live at more extreme latitudes though. Not everyone has that as a good option. I factored in the sunlight and weather when deciding where to live It is a hard problem to solve technically. Getting collimated light in a compact space, not wasting a ton of energy while having high cri and the right color temp or emulating Rayleigh scattering. The higher end products are also pretty large.
  • stevage 4y ago
    That doesn't solve the problem of wanting to work or do other indoor activities in "natural light".
• braingenious 4y ago
  Why is there a shortage of daylight?
  • stevage 4y ago
    Old houses or otherwise poorly designed buildings, heavily built up areas, etc.
  • 8n4vidtmkvmk 4y ago
    yes. not every one gets a lot in their home or office
  • xxs 4y ago
    Winter, the North. The days are short, like really short.
  • noir_lord 4y ago
    I live 53 degrees north, our shortest day is less than 8 hours. If you work somewhere without windows (which I did for a while) and work 9-5 you basically never see the sun Monday to Friday.
• turtlebits 4y ago
  If the lack of natural light is affecting you, SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) lamps are easy to find. Trying to generate sunlight that can fill a room like the sun is going to use a lot of power and generate heat. Also, the DIY youtube versions don't feel very realistic to me, it's probably a much harder (and expensive) problem to solve than just a fresnel lens. edit: Watching another youtube video, it looks like the DIY versions are missing the "blue sky effect"
  • 8n4vidtmkvmk 4y ago
    i saw one with the blue sky effect too.. i think he made essentially a narrow fish tank and then added some dish soap or something to scatter the light like the sky would
• faangiq 4y ago
  Just say no. Add more windows.
  • stevage 4y ago
    In many built up areas that's very difficult, due to planning regulations.
  • dredmorbius 4y ago
    Not always an option. E.g.: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32221087 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32221087
• clumsysmurf 4y ago
  My Verilux lamp comes with a warning if you are susceptible to macular degeneration. In the meantime, you can get very good high CRI lights from waveform lighting (except in CA). A friend has the light tube in every room, I thought this was a good idea until I saw it. Everything was very cold and blueish, as if it was cloudy. I actually found it somewhat depressing.
• asah 4y ago
  https://theliquidview.com/ https://theliquidview.com/
• rlei 4y ago
  I'm a cofounder at Lumina - we're a consumer hardware startup looking to build products like this. We've done a lot of research on lighting in pursuit of building a better webcam (our main product). We found the lights on the market (i) aren't very bright, (ii) aren't smart in any way, and (iii) are way too expensive for the functionality you're getting. Personally, I use a 100 watt LED corn bulb but it's not very pretty. We're considering building a light as our next product. Imagine: a light that's super bright, adapts its color and intensity to the weather / time of day / other lights in your room. (If anyone has ideas here, please reach out!)
  • eternalban 4y ago
    I've always like the idea of light pipes: https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/130769/can-fiber-optic-cables-be-used-to-pipe-sunlight-into-an-underground-bunker-for-g https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/130769/can... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_tube https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_tube
    • zapt02 4y ago
      Check out https://www.parans.com/ https://www.parans.com/ which do just that.
      • gen3 4y ago
        That's pretty cool. It's just like Portal
  • EricE 4y ago
    An LED alternative to Microsun would be nice https://microsunlamps.com https://microsunlamps.com They are specialty metal halide bulbs - and really work!
• alwa 4y ago
  https://www.skyfactory.com https://www.skyfactory.com have been around for a while -- they seem more interested in the biophilia notion than the sheer intensity of light though. Seems priced for medical settings and high-end commercial kinds of projects.
• kristiandupont 4y ago
  I am very interested in this myself, and I have wanted a Coelux for years. You might also find Daniel Rybakkens work interesting: https://www.danielrybakken.com/surface_daylight.html https://www.danielrybakken.com/surface_daylight.html http://www.danielrybakken.com/daylight_comes_sideways_files/daylight%20comes%20sideways*%20-%20daniel%20rybakken.pdf http://www.danielrybakken.com/daylight_comes_sideways_files/...
• melony 4y ago
  Because Rayleigh scattering is hard (and the demand isn't there).
• egorfine 4y ago
  I was dreaming about making a hardware startup to do just that: sun emulator window.
• pigtailgirl 4y ago
  -- Kino Flo - they're really really really great - been using them for 15 years -- https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1193255-REG/kino_flo_cfx_244_2ft_4bank_fixture.html/overview https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1193255-REG/kino_flo_...
• einmus 4y ago
  I don't know where you are and if you can buy Yeelight. I think they have exactly what you need. https://page.yeelight.com/skylight.html https://page.yeelight.com/skylight.html I'd say roughly 400 usd.
• twelvechairs 4y ago
  I don't understand why you need it in 'panel' form? There's a heap of daylight and sunlight spectrum reproducing bulbs of varying qualities and price points on amazon and that are easily googlable, produced by everyone by big lighting companies (like GE) down to specialists like www.ottlite.com or sunlight2.com.
• orthoxerox 4y ago
  Because it sounds like a "pod living & insect protein" product. People strongly prefer natural light to "I can't believe it's not natural light".
  • stevage 4y ago
    I dunno. I've never tried the fake version. You could predict the same to be true about Impossible Burger but that has done well.
• TazeTSchnitzel 4y ago
  My intuition would be that this can't be that rare: surely photographers are a lucrative market?
  • Etheryte 4y ago
    This isn't really a problem photographers have, if anything, photographers often have to work around natural light. A good example of this is using either fill flash or artificial shade when shooting on very sunny days. The contrast and the shadows created by full on sun are just too harsh for most situations. Similarly in a studio, you're generally not looking to recreate what sunlight looks like, because sunlight by itself often doesn't look all that good.
• kojeovo 4y ago
  Why should there be? It's very easy to get sunlight.
  • stevage 4y ago
    In some places,
    • kojeovo 4y ago
      You get it through clouds as well, takes a little longer. I would think the only places it may be a pain is if it's super cold or rainy all the time. Which is kind of the point of my question -- most places it's not hard, so what would the incentive be? "Go outside" is a much easier sell
• pharke 4y ago
  The hardware to create a convincing effect is simply too expensive at the moment to be mass market. You can produce collimated light with either a reflector or a lens but both have their issues. Reflectors will add required depth to the package although it can be minimized to some extent. This makes for a rather bulky install and isn't something you can just hang on the wall. Lenses allow the design to be flatter but the more easily produced fresnel variety won't have the same quality of light. You also have to balance whether to use a single point light source or multiple sources and reflectors/lenses. Cooling becomes a problem for light sources that are bright enough to mimic daylight, this would also add noise which would break the illusion of a window. You need a diffuser of some sort which adds more cost even if it is just a sheet of plastic. All of that adds up to a fairly bulky and expensive piece of equipment which is why you only see a few high end companies producing them for a very niche market. Hopefully this can be changed in the future by having the cost of high power LEDs come down even more. Maybe mass production of high quality lenses will be helped by developments in the VR field. There are some promising developments there with so called pancake lenses that could make things a lot smaller.
• Spooky23 4y ago
  The people who put people in boxes without light don’t care about it. If they did, they’d have an office with a light!
• budzes 4y ago
  I use Vitae bulb. It has three modes - day, evening, night. See their pages for spectral power distribution: https://www.vitaelight.com/en/vitaelight-en/ https://www.vitaelight.com/en/vitaelight-en/ You can buy it or rent it. One is for 89€ or 1.99€/month. Four are for 299€. I use it for several years and it's great, especially the night mode.
• westurner 4y ago
  The nuclear reaction at the center of our solar system, our sun, emits EM radiation of various wavelengths. FWIU, there are various devices for phototherapy (light therapy) which are more common in more non-equatorial lattitudes. Light therapy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_therapy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_therapy There are various "corn bulb" LED products, but FWIU few of the products verifiably produce UVC light; and even fewer still are built from relatively new (full spectrum) UVC LEDs. The Broan bath fans with SurfaceShield by Vyv bath fans produce ~"ultrablue" but not UVC or a detachable Chromecast Audio. There are bulbs that switch from normal UVA to ultrablue and/or UVC on the second flIP of the circuit.
  • rapjr9 4y ago
    UVC causes cancer and cataracts and is blocked by the Earth's atmosphere so almost none reaches the surface. Do NOT shine UVC light on your eyes or skin!
    • westurner 4y ago
      From "Accidental Exposure to Ultraviolet-C (UVC) Germicidal Lights: A Case Report and Recommendations in Orthodontic Clinical Settings" (2021) https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/03015742211013761 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/03015742211013... > While UVA radiation is the least hazardous and most associated with skin ageing, UVB is known to cause DNA damage and is a risk factor in developing sunburn, skin cancer, and cataracts. UVC is a “germicidal” radiation with the ability to penetrate deeper, killing bacteria and inactivating viruses.6 There are various types of UVC germicidal lamps—cold cathode germicidal UV lamps, hot cathode germicidal UV lamps, slimline germicidal UV lamps, high output germicidal UV lamps, UV LEDs, and UV lamp shapes with lamp connectors. The latter two are the safest to be used with the utmost precautions. > This case report describes a vital observation of adverse effects produced by exposure to UV germicidal lamps. There are very few studies reporting accidental exposures to UVC at work in hospital settings. 7 [...] > Importantly, overexposure to UVC radiation causes ocular and epidermal signs and symptoms. Typical skin reactions in a welder and acute sunburn produced by an electric insect-killing device with an irradiance of as much as 46 mW m-2 have been reported previously in the literature.13, 14 As for germicidal lamps, adverse effects include facial erythema, burning sensation, irritation, pain, keratoconjunctivitis, sunburn, conjunctival redness, blurry vision, photophobia, and irritation to the airway due to the generation of ozone from UVC lamps.
• RandomLensman 4y ago
  Sunlight or a sunny day are incredibly bright, so you need a fair bit of power, even with LEDs, to get close to those brightness levels beyond some small area.
• londons_explore 4y ago
  A proper window costs a lot of money to run... Daylight is about 1000 watts per square meter, so having a 2mx2m window in 5 rooms of your house illuminated 10 hours per day with led lighting is about 200 kWh per day, which is 10x a typical Americans electric bill. And that doesn't even include the infrared or UV that regular sunlight has, which you might want for sun tanning/warmth/realistic sun feel - including that would double the cost again.
  • stevage 4y ago
    First, it doesn't have to be as bright as sunlight, just of similar quality. Second, you wouldn't run 5 rooms all day. Just the room you are in. And 2m X 2m is enormous. No idea if your power figures are right. UV would be a bug, not a feature.
    • antisthenes 4y ago
      You don't even need it on the 2m x 2m area. You just need it illuminating your workspace and/or your face/retinas. Bonus points if your desk is light enough to reflect the light around you.
• tamaharbor 4y ago
  IKEA has fake lighted windows all over the place. I wonder where they get those.
• elteto 4y ago
  > The demand for "natural light" in homes and offices is very high, and higher than the availability of actual daylight. This makes me feel as if I was entitled for wanting/wasting a scarce resource. There’s plenty of sunlight available and it’s not running out. Let’s just make more windows.
• jayparth 4y ago
  I believe there is a company to be built here.
• EricE 4y ago
  They aren't LED (instead specialty, high quality metal halide), but if you want a high CRI and ridiculously bright light source, Microsun is hard to beat https://microsunlamps.com https://microsunlamps.com I have two of them and especially in the winter I really love them. Retrofitted a floor lamp and table lamp. I don't know what kind of crazy COB LED would be required to be equivalent to them - probably wouldn't fit into standard lamps either but would require a bespoke fixture.
• agos 4y ago
  you might be interested in "You need more lumens" [0] [0] - https://meaningness.com/sad-light-lumens https://meaningness.com/sad-light-lumens
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]