How to Build a Lumenator

It turns out there was an original article written on arbital.com, which I failed to find because I mispelled "lumenator". The links on what to buy are out of date, but more clearly convey which technical specifications are important

This is a good post, props for writing up a practical thing that people can refer to! This is potentially really useful information for people outside the community as well - lots of people struggle with SAD.

Two small changes I'd want to see before I show this to friends outside the community:

• Take out the word "rationalist" in the first sentence. This sounds like a small nitpick but I think it's huge - It's early and prominent enough that it would likely turn off a casual reader who wasn't already aware or fond of the community. (And the person being a rationalist isn't relevant to the advice.) Replace it with "friend", perhaps.
• Add a picture, even just a crappy cell phone photo. How do you get the hooks to hang a cord from the ceiling?

I wonder if anyone has considered re-purposing "broken" LED televisions for this purpose.

Often, as an LED TV ages, it becomes less efficient at eliminating the waste heat generated by its power supply, GPU, etc., as ventilation holes become clogged with dust. When the set is powered up, the internal temperature gradients become larger than they were when set was new, ultimately leading to localized thermal expansion cycles in the thin glass screen as the set is powered on and off. Eventually, the screen develops an internal crack (usually withing a month or six of the warranty expiring) which ruins the picture quality. When this happens, people usually just chuck the set.

This happened to me several months ago, and, not wanting to waste some perfectly good hardware (I'd thought I might play around with re-purposing the GPU board) I cracked it open, removed the components I wanted to keep, and put it back together. Plugging it in, I found that I had an extremely bright back-lit tabletop, which immediately clicked in my head as something more useful than the GPU board (which, honestly was probably just going to end up collecting dust in my garage).

Reading this post got me to thinking, though. "Broken" LED TV's (e.g., ones with cracked screens) can be had on the cheap, are super bright, and are wall- (or even ceiling-) mountable. Hell, they often can be had with a wall mounting bracket still attached. They aren't unattractive, either.

Thoughts?

There's some concern in the other comments about the aesthetics of this solution, and some call for a pre-built solution from an installation-labor perspective.

For those people, I suggest getting a "High Bay LED light". These are really bright hanging light fixtures... most rooms would be well served by 1-2 them, which come in two shapes: round "UFO" and "linear". I think they look pretty good, as the need to have good heat-sinking capabilities makes them one of the few products where even the budget producers have to use "quality construction".

These are cost-competitive with the lumenator build suggested by the OP:
The lumenator ($80 of bulb sockets, $40 of command hooks, $200 lightblubs) totals $320, consumes 380W, and produces about 40000 lumens.
Modern high bay lighting solutions generally cost about .9$/watt and produce about 130-140 lumens/watt, so two 150W high bay light will cost about $300 and produce 39000 lumens. (As an added bonus, the higher bulb efficiency saves $4/year @ 150 days x 3hrs/day per year)

Disadvantages:

The CRI is generally a bit lower, around 85. The linked bulbs have a CRI of 92.

The availability of 2700K fixtures is very poor. Most high bay bulbs are 5000K, with good availability of 4000K lights.

Dimmer switch wiring is by a 0-10v logic voltage. This can be left unconnected to run at full brightness, or for one light, a 100k-ohm potentiometer works... for a single control operating two or more lights, the hydroponics industry seems to have produced a large number of inexpensive controllers.

These are largely marketed at an industrial market, so be careful to buy one that already has a cord installed, or be prepared to do some minor wiring.

Has anyone who has gotten relief by using luninators done rigorous a/b testing with different temperatures/colors or intensity or duration or other possibly important variables?

Not just gold standard clinical trials, something like “I tried color a for a week and logged 3 episodes, but color b for a week resulted in 8” could be informative for people deciding which type of bulb to get.

It looks to me like you're paying a substantial premium to get high CRI lights. It looks like the original models used lower CRI. Has anyone compared them, either in pleasantness or efficacy?

I'm happy with 80 CRI Ecosmart (8-pack of warm from amazon, 2-pack of daylight from homedepot) about half of the per-bulb price you linked. The Home Depot web site is confusing and inconsistent, but I think that I was able to get free home delivery of a small order, just a single 2-pack, from that link. But if you live in California, HD may well enforce the ban on such bulbs.

There's also David Chapman's version which is more neat-looking and possibly brighter, but not dimmable.

Other things worth trying are infrared saunas and infrared heaters.

I think it's great people engineered a solution that works for their seasonal affective disorder, but I'm skeptical this is a long term population level treatment. I am biased by how subjectively unpleasant I find such lighting systems. In terms of the true physiology of the human body, the visual light energy of the sun impacts the body much less than infrared and ultraviolet light. Therefore, a true treatment for SAD suggests light therapy on non visual spectrums.

An infrared heater has much improved my winter quality of life. Now when it's cold, I look forward to turning on the space heater, because it puts out pleasant sauna like energy instead of feeling like a blow dryer. An infrared heater puts off more negative ions than a conventional space heater. A meta review showed negative ionization of air impacts depression but their prior has them skeptical of the association without current biological mechanism. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3598548/

https://www.amazon.com/Dr-Infrared-Heater-Portable-1500-Watt/dp/B002QZ11J6/

A lot of the links are broken, so here's what I built recently with valid Amazon links as of November 2021.

5x these: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01CEXCGDO/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&th=1&fbclid=IwAR3jjBCjqfiZ1lH1HEDOidodi2kOeoGYmYqdcsVwcDNG8b73NnGNJLSZAuo

1x this: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01D3SKICK/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1&fbclid=IwAR1_KO5KVMk1qd8bp716VBBQTOE2K_qEs5O4X6wABRGT1wvlKR0OmGeh_yw

2x this: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B079QM8V1Y/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o06_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1&fbclid=IwAR2aPW2EmfEMrAJPoMtgbPkpwDA3Y3Yg7H4NIfAmSJiCwz0YyZi8QZ4pF5Q

2x this: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B079QQNY7T/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o06_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1&fbclid=IwAR3yotRrJLuhjrmiFeaRD4thnPoKhD2ArjKlD6D40SiYu7GSn5RQorDojyQ

An alternative approach is to buy a single light intended for filmmakers, which has very high CRI, a smooth emission spectrum, and adjustable intensity and color temperature, such as the Smallrig RC120B (~53k lumens). If you get a parabolic softbox attachment and a desk-clamp light-stand I think this ends up just being superior to a SAD lightbox (except perhaps in cost).

How useful would it be to have someone who produced luminators that were pegboards with lights mounted via zip ties or something equally aesthetically bad? If the labor of collecting and assembling the components can efficiently be outsourced into buying a nonstandard light fixture, it might be more accessible.

I've created an Amazon shopping list with the required items for others' reference.

https://www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/37KY512VF55MN

The subtotal as of writing is $235. The Philips bulbs are more expensive at about $4.25/bulb, but they're dimmable and can switch between 5 different color temperatures with the dial on the bottom, so you can experiment with your color mix and brightness.

The specifications I searched for: dimmable LEDs 2700K, 800 lumen, CRI95, A19 bulb, E26 base.