First, some meta-level things I’ve learned since writing this:
What people crave most is very practical advice on what to buy. In retrospect this should have been more obvious to me. When I look for help from others on how to solve a problem I do not know much about, the main thing I want is very actionable advice, like “buy this thing”, “use this app”, or “follow this Twitter account”.
Failing that, what people want is legible, easy-to-use criteria for making decisions on their own. Advice like “Find something with CRI>90, and more CRI is better” is better than “Here’s a big, complex description of the criteria you should try to optimize for that will inevitably tradeoff against each other”.
The technical background is important, but in a somewhat different way than I’d thought when I wrote it. When I was writing it, I was hoping to help transmit my model of how things work so that people could use it to make their own decisions. I still think it’s good to try to do this, however imperfectly it might happen in practice. But I think the main reason it is important is because people want to know where I’m coming from, what kinds of things I considered, and how deeply I have investigated the matter.
On the object level:
As far as I know, the post does not contain any major errors in the technical background.
Some of the practical advice is probably skewed too far toward my personal preferences. A lot of people seem to prefer lower color temperature light than I do, for example.
I now think that getting LEDs with a high-quality spectrum is fairly easy with the right budget, and the harder part is figuring out where to put them to illuminate your visual field without doing something annoying like having a bright cornbulb at eye-level. The Lightcone team seems like they’re making good progress on this and doing good experiments.
My impression from talking to people over the last 14 months is that it would be a pretty huge public service for someone to keep an up-to-date list of what the best lights are on the market(s) for various budgets and circumstances, as well as a bunch of guides/photographs for helping replicate specific solutions people have found that work for them.
By far my favorite new-to-me lighting product is the Yuji adjustable-color-temperature LED strips/panels. I’m excited to experiment with them and hopefully publish some useful results.
They’re not as bad to setup as I’d feared, though they are a bit of a hassle. I’m experimenting with them now, and I will write about it if I come up with a good way to build a light fixture with them.
(That link I did share is pretty interesting, BTW. It describes some stuff during the Wild West days of medical research, including the use of a frighteningly primitive laser to kill a tumor in a kid’s eye)
Yeah! I made some lamps using sheet aluminum. I used hot glue to attach magnets, which hold it onto the hardware hanging from the ceiling in my office. You can use dimmers to control the brightness of each color temperature strip separately, but I don’t have that set up right now.
The technical background is important, but in a somewhat different way than I’d thought when I wrote it. When I was writing it, I was hoping to help transmit my model of how things work so that people could use it to make their own decisions. I still think it’s good to try to do this, however imperfectly it might happen in practice. But I think the main reason it is important is because people want to know where I’m coming from, what kinds of things I considered, and how deeply I have investigated the matter.
Yes! I think it is beneficial and important that someone who has a lot of knowledge about this transmits their model on the internet. Maybe my Google foo is bad, but I usually have a hard time finding articles like this when there doesn’t happen to be one on Lesswrong (only can think of this counterexample I remember finding reasonably quickly).
First, some meta-level things I’ve learned since writing this:
What people crave most is very practical advice on what to buy. In retrospect this should have been more obvious to me. When I look for help from others on how to solve a problem I do not know much about, the main thing I want is very actionable advice, like “buy this thing”, “use this app”, or “follow this Twitter account”.
Failing that, what people want is legible, easy-to-use criteria for making decisions on their own. Advice like “Find something with CRI>90, and more CRI is better” is better than “Here’s a big, complex description of the criteria you should try to optimize for that will inevitably tradeoff against each other”.
The technical background is important, but in a somewhat different way than I’d thought when I wrote it. When I was writing it, I was hoping to help transmit my model of how things work so that people could use it to make their own decisions. I still think it’s good to try to do this, however imperfectly it might happen in practice. But I think the main reason it is important is because people want to know where I’m coming from, what kinds of things I considered, and how deeply I have investigated the matter.
On the object level:
As far as I know, the post does not contain any major errors in the technical background.
Some of the practical advice is probably skewed too far toward my personal preferences. A lot of people seem to prefer lower color temperature light than I do, for example.
I now think that getting LEDs with a high-quality spectrum is fairly easy with the right budget, and the harder part is figuring out where to put them to illuminate your visual field without doing something annoying like having a bright cornbulb at eye-level. The Lightcone team seems like they’re making good progress on this and doing good experiments.
My impression from talking to people over the last 14 months is that it would be a pretty huge public service for someone to keep an up-to-date list of what the best lights are on the market(s) for various budgets and circumstances, as well as a bunch of guides/photographs for helping replicate specific solutions people have found that work for them.
By far my favorite new-to-me lighting product is the Yuji adjustable-color-temperature LED strips/panels. I’m excited to experiment with them and hopefully publish some useful results.
Quick question:
When you say, “Yuji adjustable-color-temperature LED strips/panels”
Do you mean these guys?
https://store.yujiintl.com/products/yujileds-high-cri-95-dim-to-warm-led-flexible-strip-1800k-to-3000k-168-leds-m-pack-5m-reel
It looks kind of intimidating to setup, and is pricey, but maybe is worth it.
Yeah, those or these: https://vdoc.pub/documents/lasers-in-opthalmology-basics-diagnostics-and-surgical-aspects-a-review-3ha5mu7ureog
Or the long 2700K/6500K ribbons.
They’re not as bad to setup as I’d feared, though they are a bit of a hassle. I’m experimenting with them now, and I will write about it if I come up with a good way to build a light fixture with them.
Thanks!
Just checking; I think you might have sent the wrong link though?
Yes, sorry, I somehow missed your reply until now. I probably meant this: https://store.yujiintl.com/collections/high-cri-white-led-strips/products/yujileds-high-cri-95-dynamic-tunable-white-multirow-led-flexible-strip
(That link I did share is pretty interesting, BTW. It describes some stuff during the Wild West days of medical research, including the use of a frighteningly primitive laser to kill a tumor in a kid’s eye)
Interesting. Thanks!
Do you have any updates on this? I’m interested in this.
Yeah! I made some lamps using sheet aluminum. I used hot glue to attach magnets, which hold it onto the hardware hanging from the ceiling in my office. You can use dimmers to control the brightness of each color temperature strip separately, but I don’t have that set up right now.
Yes! I think it is beneficial and important that someone who has a lot of knowledge about this transmits their model on the internet. Maybe my Google foo is bad, but I usually have a hard time finding articles like this when there doesn’t happen to be one on Lesswrong (only can think of this counterexample I remember finding reasonably quickly).