Despite the proliferation of artificial lighting, humans are still highly dependent on sunlight for regulation of our circadian rhythms. Accordingly, [Sector 07] has built a futuristic headboard that can help with the waking up side of things whether you’re headed to space or just in the dead of winter.
The interior of the headboard includes custom 3D printed panels to mount the electronics and a light diffusion screen made of nylon fabric. The printed parts were all joined by “welding” the pieces with a soldering iron and extra filament. Besides the futuristic hexagon motif in the diffusion screen, the most eye-catching part of this build is the curved ends making it look like a set piece from Star Trek: TNG. [Sector 07] was able to get the unique shape by kerf bending the plywood ends before joining them to the flat sections with dowels and wood glue.
Since this build also includes an integrated coffee maker and voice assistant, there’s a bit more going on with the electronics than you might have in a normal circadian lamp. Powering the project are two Arduino Mega boards and a SpeakUp Click that handles the voice commands. Wake-up times are controlled via a keypad, and the voice assistant, Prisma, will ask if you are awake once the 30 minute sun simulation has completed before your alarm goes off. If you don’t confirm wakefulness, Prisma will escalate alarms until the system is sure you’re awake and then will ask if you want coffee. If you want a deep dive into the system’s functionality, be sure to checkout the video after the break.
We’ve covered artificial suns before, so if you’re interested in trying to build you’re own you should check out this Hugely Bright Artificial Sun, a Sunrise Alarm Clock Mounted Above the Bed, and this Artificial Sun Via Old Satellite Dishes.
I like it! I’m building ceiling lights myself, out of dead monitor panels.
How about UV light for vitamin D? I have not found any ressources for UV light yet and I sure do not want to get cancer because I am missing knowledge. Any ideas what I have to take into consideration healthwise?
You need UVB to produce vitamin D – which means tanning lamps or specialty LEDs that cost $20-50 a piece from China. It will give you a sunburn if you get too much, and it is damaging to the eyes. It’s a dangerous thing to screw around with – better to make an active device so that proper eye protection can be assured, and limit exposure.
You don’t need UV light exposure, if you eat fungi that have been exposed to UV light for 15 minutes before cooking as they will synthesis vitamin D themselves.
So i guess an easy hack would be to put your mushrooms on the pillow and just sleep in the kitchen. ^^
This guy has never woken up in a hurry for whatever reason or he’d be cracking that headboard regularly.
LOL! Exactly. It also limits possible positions for “horizontal dancing.”
Or enable new ones depending how much weight it can support.
Just date a Cowgirl.
Don’t think it really sticks out enough for that to be a worry – you sit up and pivot around your but, so by the time your head and torso are up enough that arc you head travels through would I think carry you past with quite large clearance – as the light doesn’t seem to be even as a wide as pillow, and most folks heads would therefore only actually be under the light by an inch or two.
You certainly could hit your head on it, but I think it would almost take a deliberate act of will to do so for most people, even being as long as the bed (as I am) so your head is really always right up against the in this case black bricks I think you’d get enough clearance.
You could build it at an 45° angle. Will still shine into your face but you can’t easily bump your head into it.
Make this thing Alexa connected and it’s a thing. To manually enter my wakeup-time instead of just telling it is from the pre-voice assistent era and thus not cool.
Do your fingers work ok? Did you enter this comment by voice-to-text, or did you type? Just wondering… atrophy and all.
All good. Less competition for resources.
I could not imagine how much I would like to yell into the room “Alexa, wake me up at xx” until I decided to put an Echo into my bedroom. I have ADHD and constantly forgot to enter my wakeup-time. So I either was woken up on the weekends at unreasonable times or was not woken up at all during the week. Voice assistents are perfect for people like me. The moment you have the thought you can just tell it the device and that’s it.
In the book 1984 there’s a scene where the (literally) Orwellian government disappears a dissident for the crime of speaking anti-Party thoughts while sleeping. Why do I bring this up? No reason…
It seems to me that I remember open source voice recognition that runs locally being a thing that people were actively developing before Alexa/Siri/Hey Google/etc… Then suddenly it wasn’t and everyone just jumps to the cloud solution as though it’s the only way and there is no other possibility to be considered.
I’m not sure I have the mathematical or acoustical background to pick that development up wherever it left off. Maybe though if we didn’t all just jump on the Alexa suggestion reflexively we just might one day see articles here about people replacing their corporate big brothers with local applications?
I’m just saying… I remember seeing desktop computers with early Pentium I chips and a few megs of RAM doing voice recognition without an internet connection. I’m sure our low end SBCs and other hacker toys can handle the job nicely with the right programming.
There are open source offline speech recognition bits out there. I have no idea how complete and usable they are, but they absolutely exist and haven’t entirely died out.
These days I don’t expect you need any math or acoustical understanding – you fob that off on the “AI” feeding it a nice big data set. Though dealing with the learning models is another skill in itself it seems (though I haven’t tried it).
Like my old Ring doorbell, which when pressed, sent its command to an Amazon server 14000km away (in the US) which in turn sent it back to the chime unit 2m away from the doorbell?
Needless to say, it missed almost every courier ever because it took more than 30s for the ring to come through.
I returned that piece of crap and got a videophone doorbell for about $100 less. Granted I had to run a cable through the ceiling, but my doorbell now rings /when it’s pressed/, shows me who is there and lets me talk to them. Bonus is it has an an output port which I can use /if/ I want to make it an IoT device too.
This is a very nice build ! Very futuristic! A gentle wake up to coffee brewing is the best way to prepare for the rest of the day. Having it tied into to a voice home assistant (A or G) would take it to the next level. Nothing against Prisma and this build mind you. There are bedside wakeup lamps and such but this is far better. However, the opening of the video gave me a Soilent Green flashback. Actually I would be the one wearing a Planets of the Apes mask standing over the sleeper saying ” oh good.. he’s coming out of suspended animation… Uh there’s something you should know…” 🤣
I found that the warm-up appearance of a ceramic metal halide lamp (CMH) is pretty good for a wake-up lamp. It starts out dim and bluish and gradually turns warmer and much brighter. A single 100W CMH lamp will light up a typical room like daytime. They’re pretty cheap now for bulb and electronic ballast since everyone is turning their attention to LED. A Philips Mastercolor CMH lamp is 90+ CRI and really does a good job of looking like sunlight.
A dryer timer, pot, and dimmer did this for me in the mid 70’s. I’d still wake up before it’s time but a soft start anyway. Today I have a timer turn the audio system on which includes a light and video monitor. I am nearly always awake when it goes off. The amp takes a minute to sound so some stages.
All that AC current carrying wires so near your brain while you are sleeping is probably a bigger problem than missing your daily dose of sunlight. I have tasmota based LED bulbs with wake up sequences but I never need it, because I live in a semirural area and often have the window open for fresh air so the morning chorus of the birds is hard to miss. Bird sounds would be good to add to an artificial system, if you live in a bunker, or spaceship.
Why would AC wiring be bad? Is your brain full of iron shavings? It’s just a bit of magnetism.