7 ms·

Very cool. I’m the CEO of Innerscene (https://innerscene.com https://innerscene.com) and we make a commercial artificial skylight that uses some of these conce

Very cool. I’m the CEO of Innerscene (https://innerscene.com https://innerscene.com) and we make a commercial artificial skylight that uses some of these concepts. Actually the coelux ht25 model is almost identical to what you made but using smaller lenses and more LEDs - however the effect they were able to achieve still isn’t that great, the sun looks like a giant orb and once you get a few feet away you can make out a sun at all. We spent a lot of time working on perfect collimation and hiding lens edges and making sure the view into the sky was seamless and artifact free. I’d say the last 10% of that problem is 90% of the work. :). I think we successfully cracked the nut but currently using a lot of expensive parts so working on brining the cost down. If you search Innerscene patent many of our approaches are spelled out. We also spent a lot of time on simulation and software…

fouronnes3 2y ago
Are you hiring? I'm looking for a job currently. Contact info is on my website :)
- jclarkcom 2y ago
  Let’s chat! Are you the article author?
  - fouronnes3 2y ago
    Yes that's me! Happy to chat :)
    - the_arun 2y ago
      This is a great way to pitch for a job & half the interview is already done.
      - johnmcaller 2y ago
        True!
    - qgin 2y ago
      This is Hacker News magic, I love it
      - rbanffy 2y ago
        We can be an awesome community when we listen to the better angels in ourselves.
  - elialbert 2y ago
    i support you hiring this person. seems like a match made in heaven
rambambram 2y ago
> If you search Innerscene patent many of our approaches are spelled out. Subtle, nice. Maybe you can give the man a job. ;)
sheepscreek 2y ago
“Virtual Sun” looks really cool. How much does one cost today? Say if someone wanted to buy a single piece or a few (2-3).
- dan-robertson 2y ago
  Pricing is ‘contact us’ and going to be region-dependent. I would expect to pay ca $ 10^4.5 for a panel that produces the ‘virtual sun’ effect. Same goes for competitors (I know of Coelux but maybe there are others. Not sure how quality/price compares). But maybe GP will reply to you.
  - jclarkcom 2y ago
    Yes, it’s region specific. In the USA sales generally go through a partner. But it is a fraction of the weight, depth, and cost of the large coelux units that run $40k plus install. We also realized there is a need for producing just the sky with great photo metrics and that is even thinner and less expensive. A lot of interesting reading can be found in our interactive spec sheet here: https://www.innerscene.com/products/circadian-sky/CircadianSkySpec_NA.html?content=toc%2Ftoc.html https://www.innerscene.com/products/circadian-sky/CircadianS...
    - kulahan 2y ago
      Make them small, add heat, attack the pet market >:)
      - jclarkcom 2y ago
        Haha - actually one of our customers is a doggie hotel chain that has installed them in multiple locations
    - mstade 2y ago
      Is your pricing also a fraction of coelux's, or just the dimensions? :o)
klysm 2y ago
How do you guys go about doing sheet metal design? It looks pretty clean
- jclarkcom 2y ago
  Thanks! It’s powder coating that gives it a super clean look, great for sales demos but I’d suggest that anything not visible from the room side should be cost optimized
  - klysm 2y ago
    Yeah definitely, I’m more referring to the bending process, material selection, fastener types, etc. It seems like quite the art form
    - jclarkcom 2y ago
      Oh, gotcha. we don’t do that in-house but lots of companies are available that specialize in this - probably one near you if search for sheet metal fabricators.
Intralexical 2y ago
This is simultaneously really cool technology, like a hyper-specialized analog light field display with health benefits, and yet there's also something dystopically unsettling about the sun being faked by a machine in a box. Please don't have your marketing department destroy the real sun. Doing so would break antitrust regulations.
- jclarkcom 2y ago
  Yes! We started out building light field displays and originally used digital displays (arrays of micro LCD screens) - the result was super awesome but had a long road to becoming becoming a commercially viable product so pivoted to analog use cases which are a lot more energy efficient meaning we could achieve a lot brighter output.
cannonpr 2y ago
I adore the lights by your company, though they seem to be incredibly hard to source in general except for high end architectural projects. I wish there was an easier way to order them directly for DYI inclined engineers willing to pay the price.
- jclarkcom 2y ago
  Yeah - channels can be a pain, reach out to me directly if you run into issues: Jonathan @ Innerscene
  - ajolly 2y ago
    Super interesting! Any idea how you guys compare with https://getchroma.co/products/skylight https://getchroma.co/products/skylight ? I love the idea of high quality lighting inside especially for my Chicago place.
    - jclarkcom 2y ago
      its tricky to compare because ours are designed to be integrated into a space and create the appearance of window with a big focus on high CCTs (2200k-40,000k) which relocates the color and spectrum of a blue sky using up to 180W. This lamp seems to be focused on lower CCTs (1800k-5000k) at high powers (750w is a lot of heat to dissipate). Both have similar Rf and CRI but we maintain great Rg and CRI across the whole range. The one you linked is a stand alone lamp and they seem to focus on red light which I don’t quite understand. Red light (or very low CCTs) is used for skin therapy but typically requires direct exposure to the skin because irradiance levels need to be super high for that - from my understanding you wouldn’t have any benefit from a red lamp even at 750w. But blue light does can have lots of health benefits at low levels (search for ipRGCs).
  - MichaelZuo 2y ago
    Why not sell them directly, or via well known retailers, at the highest price point and with the longest warranty? e.g. McMaster-Carr with a 10 year in-home repair warranty. And you can still offer discounts via other lower price channels.
kulahan 2y ago
It’s infuriating that you only have “accept all cookies” and no other options. Oh but I do absolutely love this concept. I’m curious if you’ve had lots of interest from these billionaires building bunkers, if that story is even true!
- jclarkcom 2y ago
  Not a bunker per say but I recently learned that in some states/cities you don’t pay property taxes on square footage below ground so you end up with people building more space below than above ground and Virtual Sun can make it feel like above ground space. Just visited a billionaire project last week where this was the case.
  - Aeolun 2y ago
    Kinda hilarious that the people with the money to pay those property taxes would go to such lengths to avoid them. Still, I'll keep this in mind on the off chance it ever becomes relevant to me.
nmarinov 2y ago
Hi, I couldn't figure it out on your site but on the picture where you have your hand under the virtual sun[1], do you feel the warmth of the "sun" on your hand as you'd feel it with the real sun? [1] - https://www.innerscene.com/_next/image?url=%2F_next%2Fstatic%2Fmedia%2Fsq3-crisp-virtual-sun-infinity-sun-light.d3912947.png&w=1200&q=90 https://www.innerscene.com/_next/image?url=%2F_next%2Fstatic...
- jclarkcom 2y ago
  No, there is no IR to speak of, however a lot of people tell us they feel warmer when they stand under it - just a psychological effect but interesting to observe
  - Nelkins 2y ago
    Would you ever consider making a product that emits some level of IR? Or even a very small amount of UV? Would be amazing for the winter months, even if it was just a very small amount.
    - jclarkcom 2y ago
      UL safety cortication and energy regulations make it difficult to add UV and IR, UV because it can easily damage people's eyes and IR because it introduces too much heat which can be a fire or touch/burn risk. Energy regulations also limit how much wattage you can put into lighting, if most of that energy goes into creating IR (like real sunlight) then you won't comply with those regulations. For now it's better to buy a separate space heater to create IR, then you could also use a cheaper energy source like gas.
reaperman 2y ago
I'm very impressed that Innerscene provides LM-63 data for your artificial skylights. Is there any chance you'd be open to providing Spectral Similarity Index scores for your skylight? I think it would really differentiate your product and show how much your company cares about quality.
- jclarkcom 2y ago
  We provide full 1nm resolution SPDs in our download section so you can do any kind of calculations you want. Worth noting the SPDs change a lot depending on the color temperature of the light. In terms of similarity, trying to match sunlight exactly is not ideal because UV is bad for you and IR is a lot of water energy that can be produced in other ways more efficiently. For energy efficiency we focus on the spectrum that is most important for humans (versus plants, fish, etc). This is mostly the visible spectrum as align with our cones and the blue spectrum aligned with our ipRGCs. Most people don’t know about ipRGCs so we have a research page about this here: https://www.innerscene.com/research https://www.innerscene.com/research For the visible spectrum we target 90+ CRI for the full CCT range (3000-40,000k) but it goes as high as 98 and even R9 goes up to 9& as well. You might find this content about ipRGCs and melanopic light interesting https://www.innerscene.com/products/circadian-sky/CircadianSkySpec_NA.html?content=melanopic%2Fmelanopic.html https://www.innerscene.com/products/circadian-sky/CircadianS...
  - reaperman 2y ago
    Thank you! I’m sorry I overlooked those files. I greatly appreciate this perspective and research. It’s clear that your company leaves no stone unturned.
  - matheweis 2y ago
    I have a bunch of related questions so I will drop them all here: * You mentioned focusing the spectrum on humans, but I have always wanted to have light that works well for both humans and plants (e.g. houseplants) as they are also beneficial for human spaces. Why not do both? * Exposure to near IR has significant health benefits and seems like it should be included in an ideal lighting fixture that attempts to replicate the sun: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9855677/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9855677/ What do you mean when you say IR can be produced in other ways more efficiently? * How does your product compare with the Yuji Skyline?
aftbit 2y ago
Are there any high-resolution photos of these panels in real spaces? I can only find renders.
- jclarkcom 2y ago
  here is an example install, this is not a render (the window is real but the skylight is not) https://www.innerscene.com/gallery/residential-virtual-sun https://www.innerscene.com/gallery/residential-virtual-sun Here is a video showing the units suspended in the air https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/e0p4rsx31cqag42cklc61/A7_freestanding.mp4?rlkey=o4hhhus6twd7mc07il0rm5exz&st=mpw51y5d&dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/e0p4rsx31cqag42cklc61/A7_free...
atombender 2y ago
Was the skylight in the season 25 episode of Grand Designs [1] made by your company? [1] https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x97hx8g https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x97hx8g (from 39 mins in)
- jclarkcom 2y ago
  Yes! Good eye. They installed a pretty early version of our product - I think it took 4-5 years for the episode to finally come out
crossroadsguy 2y ago
Not joking. Do these artificial sunlights help with the allergies? If yes and if it's not insanely costly I'd just try to get something like that for my bedroom during allergy seasons which most often coincides with no sun (winter, rain here). Even in those seasons when the sun comes out in its glory, the allergies (which mostly is my nose turning into an infinite source of salt water), which were driving me stark raving mad since days - at times weeks, might just vanish within an hour. Yeah, w/o even stepping into the sun. (And no, I am not D deficient.)
- jclarkcom 2y ago
  Hmm, never heard that before, I’ll have to research it more. Maybe the UV from sunlight is killing something you are allergic to. We don’t have UV for safety and energy efficiency reasons but you could try buying some strong UV lamps and see if that helps. Ideally you turn them on when you are out of the room so they don’t damage your eyes or cause cancer.
  - crossroadsguy 2y ago
    Oh, thanks. I will explore more on this.
    - jclarkcom 2y ago
      You might want to test for mold as well
    - wholinator2 2y ago
      I just want to emphasize how important it is for you to not be in the room with it when it's on. It can seriously damage you. There are stories of them being used at parties cause they looked cool and 12 hours later everyone is in the hospital cause it feels like their eyes are melting in permanent lava, their exposed skin is severely burned, it sounds like a horrible experience. Safety precautions are essential because it doesn't feel wrong when it's happening, but only hours after exposure. Also the lights can look really cool, so unsuspecting people may cause themselves serious damage without knowing.
deleted 2y ago
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noosphr 2y ago
Are you guys looking at fabbing your own LED dies? The actual spectrum of commercial LEDs is all over the place when you start measuring it it with a spectrometer, even when they supposedly have a high CRI. Especially if you want some temperature that isn't 6500K. It was so bad that when I was building a night light for my eink desktop I ended up using halogen bulbs which I could undervolt. The main issue was that I wanted to be able to shift the spectrum of the lights from natural sunlight at noon, down to candle light at night. I did have big plans for doing a neural network to control a bunch of LEDs against a reference temperature, but having to build and calibrate a spectrometer and jig as part of a back prop algorithm was a bit beyond my interest, especially since for halogens I just needed a lookup table with temperatures to voltages that worked for all the bulbs from the lot I used.
- jclarkcom 2y ago
  there are companies that can do custom phosphor formulations for you to target a specific output. The minimum order quantities don’t make it practical for DIY but not too bad for a small startup. Our approach is to mix a bunch of different LEDs together to get the color and spectrum we want. Check out telelumen.com for an example that uses 16 chips. These are designed for researchers
  - noosphr 2y ago
    I was doing something very similar to telelumen but given the variation in LED spectrum you could get off aliexpress in 2020 I could never hope to match their quality without tuning each led separately. Looking at the spectrum graphs for your lights I'm seeing the telltale phosphor coating spike for both warm and cool white leds. An understandable tradeoff, but with the brightness of monochromatic LEDs you can get today one that's not essential any more. With the drop in costs for both controllers and pcbs since then you should be able to get telelumen quality temperature spectra without the matching price, especially if you can get LEDs that have consistent spectra for their nominal wavelength - you only need to tune the controller once instead of for each light.
    - 2y ago
Aeolun 2y ago
Does this actually give you the same intensity as sunlight? Or well, close enough to it that the light can diffuse into the rest of the room? In my experience my 4000lm projector doesn't have anywhere near the intensity to properly approach sunlight.
- jclarkcom 2y ago
  Outside direct sunlight can be 100,000 lux. With one fixture if you are standing in the sunbeam you are more likely to be at 2000 lux which is a long way off. You can add more fixtures to increase the light you are getting. However it turns out that one of the most important parts of natural light is “melanopic lux” which comes from light centered around 490nm (blue), if you get more or this spectrum it can have the same effect as having a lot more light from a low blue Light fixture. (I.e typical 2700k bulb) Some info about this; https://www.innerscene.com/products/circadian-sky/CircadianSkySpec_NA.html?content=melanopic%2Fmelanopic.html https://www.innerscene.com/products/circadian-sky/CircadianS... There is now a lot of research that looks into how much of this blue light you need and architects are starting to incorporate this into Building designs.
garfield_light 2y ago
Nitpick, but the image in "Innerscene Health Impacts" is very obviously AI generated, besides any personal opinions on GenAI it just looks bad. I suspect photographing the intern will yield something better.
- dakial1 2y ago
  Well, I think the challenge here is that they need to install the lights in all those settings to take the photo and this would be very expensive. The main purpose is to illustrate uses here, not show the final product. Maybe a disclaimer would help.
- jclarkcom 2y ago
  Thanks for the feedback! We’ll see if we can improve that image.
dakial1 2y ago
I never heard of this concept until this post, maybe because I live in a sunny country (Brazil) but I can totally see the use case for countries in higher latitudes, as the sun setting at 3pm mist be quite depressing for people. I wonder if you guys did any research on the effects of having your product in these countries. How much would the impact on well being be?
- 123pie123 2y ago
  it is depressing, for issues see the condition Seasonal affective disorder (SAD) The light here looks really good, but the cheaper (less nicer) alternative is just a powerful (natural) LED light - search for SAD lights
- jclarkcom 2y ago
  Yes, there is some really interesting research on this topic. It turns out that if blue light centered around 490nm is an order of magnitude more effective at treating SAD. https://www.innerscene.com/papers/lux-vs-wavelength-in-light-treatment-of-seasonal-affective-disorder https://www.innerscene.com/papers/lux-vs-wavelength-in-light... Because we recreate the blue sky there is a lot of light in this spectrum
- cryptonector 2y ago
  I also live in a sunny country (Texas). But still I have "sun tubes"[0] in my house. [0] https://www.google.com/search?q=sun+tube https://www.google.com/search?q=sun+tube
KolibriFly 2y ago
Totally makes sense that things like seamless edge blending and fine-tuned collimation end up being the biggest challenges
nkmnz 2y ago
wow, these look awesome (on your marketing page ;)) I understand the pricing might depend on many factors including the location and the agent, but could you give a ballpark, such as "don't start looking for an agent if you want to spend less than X?"
- lnrd 2y ago
  What I learned over time is that if a product/service requires contacting an agent or a salesperson, then its price is only affordable for businesses and is not intended for regular consumers.
  - nkmnz 2y ago
    Probably true and in the same category of wisdom as the old saying: "if you need to ask, you cannot afford it".
dwighttk 2y ago
That’s kinda cool… is it possible to match the weather instead of “infinite blue skies” though? I have real skylights on one side of my house and would love to put these up on the other but it would be weird to have sunny skies mixed with cloudy
- jclarkcom 2y ago
  Yes! We just announced and demoed a sensor that does just this at LEDucation last week and will be shipping before the end be of the year. It’s called SkySync
rbanffy 2y ago
I was thinking of building my own, but you might have saved me from that. I couldn't find pricing for the modules on the website, but, if possible, I'd love to discuss this. My e-mail is easily findable on my profile. Also, there are no agents in Ireland.
ninininino 2y ago
Can either of your products be used on a table top or shelf or something like that w/o doing an installation? I saw your product priced at lightingdesignonline at a price I can afford, but I am in an apartment I rent that I cannot easily do renovations on. I don't care about the appearance of realism, just high quality light.
sneak 2y ago
Why aren't there prices and an order form on your website?
light_hue_1 2y ago
I'm curious, why do you only sell via agents and provide no rough pricing information online? I suspect that there are other people like me out there. Forcing me to talk to an agent to just get an idea of the price, even if I'm willing to pay a fair amount, is an automatic pass. A buy now button though, I'd be willing to do that and then discuss anything else.

fouronnes3 2y ago

Are you hiring? I'm looking for a job currently. Contact info is on my website :)

jclarkcom 2y ago
Let’s chat! Are you the article author?
- fouronnes3 2y ago
  Yes that's me! Happy to chat :)
  - the_arun 2y ago
    This is a great way to pitch for a job & half the interview is already done.
    - johnmcaller 2y ago
      True!
  - qgin 2y ago
    This is Hacker News magic, I love it
    - rbanffy 2y ago
      We can be an awesome community when we listen to the better angels in ourselves.
- elialbert 2y ago
  i support you hiring this person. seems like a match made in heaven

rambambram 2y ago

> If you search Innerscene patent many of our approaches are spelled out. Subtle, nice. Maybe you can give the man a job. ;)

sheepscreek 2y ago

“Virtual Sun” looks really cool. How much does one cost today? Say if someone wanted to buy a single piece or a few (2-3).

dan-robertson 2y ago
Pricing is ‘contact us’ and going to be region-dependent. I would expect to pay ca $ 10^4.5 for a panel that produces the ‘virtual sun’ effect. Same goes for competitors (I know of Coelux but maybe there are others. Not sure how quality/price compares). But maybe GP will reply to you.
- jclarkcom 2y ago
  Yes, it’s region specific. In the USA sales generally go through a partner. But it is a fraction of the weight, depth, and cost of the large coelux units that run $40k plus install. We also realized there is a need for producing just the sky with great photo metrics and that is even thinner and less expensive. A lot of interesting reading can be found in our interactive spec sheet here: https://www.innerscene.com/products/circadian-sky/CircadianSkySpec_NA.html?content=toc%2Ftoc.html https://www.innerscene.com/products/circadian-sky/CircadianS...
  - kulahan 2y ago
    Make them small, add heat, attack the pet market >:)
    - jclarkcom 2y ago
      Haha - actually one of our customers is a doggie hotel chain that has installed them in multiple locations
  - mstade 2y ago
    Is your pricing also a fraction of coelux's, or just the dimensions? :o)

klysm 2y ago

How do you guys go about doing sheet metal design? It looks pretty clean

jclarkcom 2y ago
Thanks! It’s powder coating that gives it a super clean look, great for sales demos but I’d suggest that anything not visible from the room side should be cost optimized
- klysm 2y ago
  Yeah definitely, I’m more referring to the bending process, material selection, fastener types, etc. It seems like quite the art form
  - jclarkcom 2y ago
    Oh, gotcha. we don’t do that in-house but lots of companies are available that specialize in this - probably one near you if search for sheet metal fabricators.

Intralexical 2y ago

This is simultaneously really cool technology, like a hyper-specialized analog light field display with health benefits, and yet there's also something dystopically unsettling about the sun being faked by a machine in a box. Please don't have your marketing department destroy the real sun. Doing so would break antitrust regulations.

jclarkcom 2y ago
Yes! We started out building light field displays and originally used digital displays (arrays of micro LCD screens) - the result was super awesome but had a long road to becoming becoming a commercially viable product so pivoted to analog use cases which are a lot more energy efficient meaning we could achieve a lot brighter output.

cannonpr 2y ago

I adore the lights by your company, though they seem to be incredibly hard to source in general except for high end architectural projects. I wish there was an easier way to order them directly for DYI inclined engineers willing to pay the price.

jclarkcom 2y ago
Yeah - channels can be a pain, reach out to me directly if you run into issues: Jonathan @ Innerscene
- ajolly 2y ago
  Super interesting! Any idea how you guys compare with https://getchroma.co/products/skylight https://getchroma.co/products/skylight ? I love the idea of high quality lighting inside especially for my Chicago place.
  - jclarkcom 2y ago
    its tricky to compare because ours are designed to be integrated into a space and create the appearance of window with a big focus on high CCTs (2200k-40,000k) which relocates the color and spectrum of a blue sky using up to 180W. This lamp seems to be focused on lower CCTs (1800k-5000k) at high powers (750w is a lot of heat to dissipate). Both have similar Rf and CRI but we maintain great Rg and CRI across the whole range. The one you linked is a stand alone lamp and they seem to focus on red light which I don’t quite understand. Red light (or very low CCTs) is used for skin therapy but typically requires direct exposure to the skin because irradiance levels need to be super high for that - from my understanding you wouldn’t have any benefit from a red lamp even at 750w. But blue light does can have lots of health benefits at low levels (search for ipRGCs).
- MichaelZuo 2y ago
  Why not sell them directly, or via well known retailers, at the highest price point and with the longest warranty? e.g. McMaster-Carr with a 10 year in-home repair warranty. And you can still offer discounts via other lower price channels.

kulahan 2y ago

It’s infuriating that you only have “accept all cookies” and no other options. Oh but I do absolutely love this concept. I’m curious if you’ve had lots of interest from these billionaires building bunkers, if that story is even true!

jclarkcom 2y ago
Not a bunker per say but I recently learned that in some states/cities you don’t pay property taxes on square footage below ground so you end up with people building more space below than above ground and Virtual Sun can make it feel like above ground space. Just visited a billionaire project last week where this was the case.
- Aeolun 2y ago
  Kinda hilarious that the people with the money to pay those property taxes would go to such lengths to avoid them. Still, I'll keep this in mind on the off chance it ever becomes relevant to me.

nmarinov 2y ago

Hi, I couldn't figure it out on your site but on the picture where you have your hand under the virtual sun[1], do you feel the warmth of the "sun" on your hand as you'd feel it with the real sun? [1] - https://www.innerscene.com/_next/image?url=%2F_next%2Fstatic%2Fmedia%2Fsq3-crisp-virtual-sun-infinity-sun-light.d3912947.png&w=1200&q=90 https://www.innerscene.com/_next/image?url=%2F_next%2Fstatic...

jclarkcom 2y ago
No, there is no IR to speak of, however a lot of people tell us they feel warmer when they stand under it - just a psychological effect but interesting to observe
- Nelkins 2y ago
  Would you ever consider making a product that emits some level of IR? Or even a very small amount of UV? Would be amazing for the winter months, even if it was just a very small amount.
  - jclarkcom 2y ago
    UL safety cortication and energy regulations make it difficult to add UV and IR, UV because it can easily damage people's eyes and IR because it introduces too much heat which can be a fire or touch/burn risk. Energy regulations also limit how much wattage you can put into lighting, if most of that energy goes into creating IR (like real sunlight) then you won't comply with those regulations. For now it's better to buy a separate space heater to create IR, then you could also use a cheaper energy source like gas.

reaperman 2y ago

I'm very impressed that Innerscene provides LM-63 data for your artificial skylights. Is there any chance you'd be open to providing Spectral Similarity Index scores for your skylight? I think it would really differentiate your product and show how much your company cares about quality.

jclarkcom 2y ago
We provide full 1nm resolution SPDs in our download section so you can do any kind of calculations you want. Worth noting the SPDs change a lot depending on the color temperature of the light. In terms of similarity, trying to match sunlight exactly is not ideal because UV is bad for you and IR is a lot of water energy that can be produced in other ways more efficiently. For energy efficiency we focus on the spectrum that is most important for humans (versus plants, fish, etc). This is mostly the visible spectrum as align with our cones and the blue spectrum aligned with our ipRGCs. Most people don’t know about ipRGCs so we have a research page about this here: https://www.innerscene.com/research https://www.innerscene.com/research For the visible spectrum we target 90+ CRI for the full CCT range (3000-40,000k) but it goes as high as 98 and even R9 goes up to 9& as well. You might find this content about ipRGCs and melanopic light interesting https://www.innerscene.com/products/circadian-sky/CircadianSkySpec_NA.html?content=melanopic%2Fmelanopic.html https://www.innerscene.com/products/circadian-sky/CircadianS...
- reaperman 2y ago
  Thank you! I’m sorry I overlooked those files. I greatly appreciate this perspective and research. It’s clear that your company leaves no stone unturned.
- matheweis 2y ago
  I have a bunch of related questions so I will drop them all here: * You mentioned focusing the spectrum on humans, but I have always wanted to have light that works well for both humans and plants (e.g. houseplants) as they are also beneficial for human spaces. Why not do both? * Exposure to near IR has significant health benefits and seems like it should be included in an ideal lighting fixture that attempts to replicate the sun: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9855677/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9855677/ What do you mean when you say IR can be produced in other ways more efficiently? * How does your product compare with the Yuji Skyline?

aftbit 2y ago

Are there any high-resolution photos of these panels in real spaces? I can only find renders.

jclarkcom 2y ago
here is an example install, this is not a render (the window is real but the skylight is not) https://www.innerscene.com/gallery/residential-virtual-sun https://www.innerscene.com/gallery/residential-virtual-sun Here is a video showing the units suspended in the air https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/e0p4rsx31cqag42cklc61/A7_freestanding.mp4?rlkey=o4hhhus6twd7mc07il0rm5exz&st=mpw51y5d&dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/e0p4rsx31cqag42cklc61/A7_free...

atombender 2y ago

Was the skylight in the season 25 episode of Grand Designs [1] made by your company? [1] https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x97hx8g https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x97hx8g (from 39 mins in)

jclarkcom 2y ago
Yes! Good eye. They installed a pretty early version of our product - I think it took 4-5 years for the episode to finally come out

crossroadsguy 2y ago

Not joking. Do these artificial sunlights help with the allergies? If yes and if it's not insanely costly I'd just try to get something like that for my bedroom during allergy seasons which most often coincides with no sun (winter, rain here). Even in those seasons when the sun comes out in its glory, the allergies (which mostly is my nose turning into an infinite source of salt water), which were driving me stark raving mad since days - at times weeks, might just vanish within an hour. Yeah, w/o even stepping into the sun. (And no, I am not D deficient.)

jclarkcom 2y ago
Hmm, never heard that before, I’ll have to research it more. Maybe the UV from sunlight is killing something you are allergic to. We don’t have UV for safety and energy efficiency reasons but you could try buying some strong UV lamps and see if that helps. Ideally you turn them on when you are out of the room so they don’t damage your eyes or cause cancer.
- crossroadsguy 2y ago
  Oh, thanks. I will explore more on this.
  - jclarkcom 2y ago
    You might want to test for mold as well
  - wholinator2 2y ago
    I just want to emphasize how important it is for you to not be in the room with it when it's on. It can seriously damage you. There are stories of them being used at parties cause they looked cool and 12 hours later everyone is in the hospital cause it feels like their eyes are melting in permanent lava, their exposed skin is severely burned, it sounds like a horrible experience. Safety precautions are essential because it doesn't feel wrong when it's happening, but only hours after exposure. Also the lights can look really cool, so unsuspecting people may cause themselves serious damage without knowing.

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noosphr 2y ago

Are you guys looking at fabbing your own LED dies? The actual spectrum of commercial LEDs is all over the place when you start measuring it it with a spectrometer, even when they supposedly have a high CRI. Especially if you want some temperature that isn't 6500K. It was so bad that when I was building a night light for my eink desktop I ended up using halogen bulbs which I could undervolt. The main issue was that I wanted to be able to shift the spectrum of the lights from natural sunlight at noon, down to candle light at night. I did have big plans for doing a neural network to control a bunch of LEDs against a reference temperature, but having to build and calibrate a spectrometer and jig as part of a back prop algorithm was a bit beyond my interest, especially since for halogens I just needed a lookup table with temperatures to voltages that worked for all the bulbs from the lot I used.

jclarkcom 2y ago
there are companies that can do custom phosphor formulations for you to target a specific output. The minimum order quantities don’t make it practical for DIY but not too bad for a small startup. Our approach is to mix a bunch of different LEDs together to get the color and spectrum we want. Check out telelumen.com for an example that uses 16 chips. These are designed for researchers
- noosphr 2y ago
  I was doing something very similar to telelumen but given the variation in LED spectrum you could get off aliexpress in 2020 I could never hope to match their quality without tuning each led separately. Looking at the spectrum graphs for your lights I'm seeing the telltale phosphor coating spike for both warm and cool white leds. An understandable tradeoff, but with the brightness of monochromatic LEDs you can get today one that's not essential any more. With the drop in costs for both controllers and pcbs since then you should be able to get telelumen quality temperature spectra without the matching price, especially if you can get LEDs that have consistent spectra for their nominal wavelength - you only need to tune the controller once instead of for each light.
  - 2y ago

Aeolun 2y ago

Does this actually give you the same intensity as sunlight? Or well, close enough to it that the light can diffuse into the rest of the room? In my experience my 4000lm projector doesn't have anywhere near the intensity to properly approach sunlight.

jclarkcom 2y ago
Outside direct sunlight can be 100,000 lux. With one fixture if you are standing in the sunbeam you are more likely to be at 2000 lux which is a long way off. You can add more fixtures to increase the light you are getting. However it turns out that one of the most important parts of natural light is “melanopic lux” which comes from light centered around 490nm (blue), if you get more or this spectrum it can have the same effect as having a lot more light from a low blue Light fixture. (I.e typical 2700k bulb) Some info about this; https://www.innerscene.com/products/circadian-sky/CircadianSkySpec_NA.html?content=melanopic%2Fmelanopic.html https://www.innerscene.com/products/circadian-sky/CircadianS... There is now a lot of research that looks into how much of this blue light you need and architects are starting to incorporate this into Building designs.

garfield_light 2y ago

Nitpick, but the image in "Innerscene Health Impacts" is very obviously AI generated, besides any personal opinions on GenAI it just looks bad. I suspect photographing the intern will yield something better.

dakial1 2y ago
Well, I think the challenge here is that they need to install the lights in all those settings to take the photo and this would be very expensive. The main purpose is to illustrate uses here, not show the final product. Maybe a disclaimer would help.
jclarkcom 2y ago
Thanks for the feedback! We’ll see if we can improve that image.

dakial1 2y ago

I never heard of this concept until this post, maybe because I live in a sunny country (Brazil) but I can totally see the use case for countries in higher latitudes, as the sun setting at 3pm mist be quite depressing for people. I wonder if you guys did any research on the effects of having your product in these countries. How much would the impact on well being be?

123pie123 2y ago
it is depressing, for issues see the condition Seasonal affective disorder (SAD) The light here looks really good, but the cheaper (less nicer) alternative is just a powerful (natural) LED light - search for SAD lights
jclarkcom 2y ago
Yes, there is some really interesting research on this topic. It turns out that if blue light centered around 490nm is an order of magnitude more effective at treating SAD. https://www.innerscene.com/papers/lux-vs-wavelength-in-light-treatment-of-seasonal-affective-disorder https://www.innerscene.com/papers/lux-vs-wavelength-in-light... Because we recreate the blue sky there is a lot of light in this spectrum
cryptonector 2y ago
I also live in a sunny country (Texas). But still I have "sun tubes"[0] in my house. [0] https://www.google.com/search?q=sun+tube https://www.google.com/search?q=sun+tube

KolibriFly 2y ago

Totally makes sense that things like seamless edge blending and fine-tuned collimation end up being the biggest challenges

nkmnz 2y ago

wow, these look awesome (on your marketing page ;)) I understand the pricing might depend on many factors including the location and the agent, but could you give a ballpark, such as "don't start looking for an agent if you want to spend less than X?"

lnrd 2y ago
What I learned over time is that if a product/service requires contacting an agent or a salesperson, then its price is only affordable for businesses and is not intended for regular consumers.
- nkmnz 2y ago
  Probably true and in the same category of wisdom as the old saying: "if you need to ask, you cannot afford it".

dwighttk 2y ago

That’s kinda cool… is it possible to match the weather instead of “infinite blue skies” though? I have real skylights on one side of my house and would love to put these up on the other but it would be weird to have sunny skies mixed with cloudy

jclarkcom 2y ago
Yes! We just announced and demoed a sensor that does just this at LEDucation last week and will be shipping before the end be of the year. It’s called SkySync

rbanffy 2y ago

I was thinking of building my own, but you might have saved me from that. I couldn't find pricing for the modules on the website, but, if possible, I'd love to discuss this. My e-mail is easily findable on my profile. Also, there are no agents in Ireland.

ninininino 2y ago

Can either of your products be used on a table top or shelf or something like that w/o doing an installation? I saw your product priced at lightingdesignonline at a price I can afford, but I am in an apartment I rent that I cannot easily do renovations on. I don't care about the appearance of realism, just high quality light.

sneak 2y ago

Why aren't there prices and an order form on your website?

light_hue_1 2y ago

I'm curious, why do you only sell via agents and provide no rough pricing information online? I suspect that there are other people like me out there. Forcing me to talk to an agent to just get an idea of the price, even if I'm willing to pay a fair amount, is an automatic pass. A buy now button though, I'd be willing to do that and then discuss anything else.