10,000 Lumen Sunrise Lamp Curses The Darkness

Some of us need a bit of help to get up in the mornings. This can come in the form of a sunrise lamp, which simulates the light of the sunrise to fool our poor sleep-deprived brains into waking up in the depths of winter. [Lincoln Johnson] found the ones he tried were not bright enough to wake him, so he decided to build his own: a 10,000-lumen monster that can wake him up from across the room.

It uses a lot of LEDS: 5 meters of 5630 LED strip, which pulls a circuit bending 72 watts when running at full blast. This monstrosity is powered by an Arduino Pro, which is programmed to slowly increase the brightness over a period of 30 minutes, thus simulating the sunrise. It uses PWM control to fade the LEDs, and also includes a dot matrix display to show the time. Honestly, if you are able to sleep through this thing blasting your eyes, you are probably dead.

26 thoughts on “10,000 Lumen Sunrise Lamp Curses The Darkness

    1. I regularly sleep during daytime and even if someone shone a few searchlights (around 800 million lumens each) directly on my face, it wouldn’t arouse me. It might annoy me if I wasn’t sleeping though.

        1. “I swear, i have been abducted by aliens. They beam me up and i don’t remember much after that. I woke up in my bed and my face was burning.”
          What a beautiful story to tell your grand children after 50 years.

  1. A 300W R7S halogen bulb is around 6000 lumens, and as you increase power it changes colour in a way that kind of simulates sunrise. I already had a 300W torchiere, so I just added a triggerable dimming controller which slowly ramps up the brightness.

  2. a circuit bending 72 watts

    Eh, that wasn’t so much, back in the day. There used to be light bulbs that would take more than 72 watts when running. Up to 100 watt ones were considered household items. If you don’t believe me, ask your grandpa, or anyone else born before 2032.

    1. Yes, but those incandescent 100W bulbs put out something like 3% as light. So 72W of LED light is a LOT brighter.

      Lumens 1,600

      LED light 16-20W

      Incandescent 100W

      CFL 23-30W

      http://www.designrecycleinc.com/led%20comp%20chart.html

      So at 1.6 Lumens per Watt for an incandescent, 10,000 Lumens would require 6.25kW of bulbs. You could use more efficient types of incandescent bulbs, but those types don’t generally survive partial power levels very long.

      Ask your grandpa, if by grandpa you mean Google.

      1. Where the heck did you get a lousy 1.6lumen/watt for incandescent? That’s like “candle” level of efficiency.

        Even the lowest incandescents (e.g. 4W/7W nightlight bulbs) were at ≈8 lumen/watt and typical household ones were 12-15 lumen/watt. High-power halogen bulbs got close to 30 lumen/watt.

      1. Yep!
        That ‘Dash’ button connected through wifi to a PI-Zero that transmits IR to an Arduino with a relay-actuated starter motor that flips over my couch with great enthusiasm.

        It is almost always in the couch. :P

  3. I always hear the timer start the stereo. Maybe once in a while I will only hear the second speaker relay click on. A sudden short sound is very effective at getting a persons interest. I made a clock motor pot dimmer ages ago.

  4. Monday –

    “Johnson, why are you late?”, “Sorry Boss, I slept late.”, “Well make sure it doesn’t happen again, OR ELSE!”

    Tuesday –

    “Boss, I can’t come in today.”, “Why not Johnson!?”, “I’m blind.”

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