Month: February 2021

To initially test the project, I used a cheap, 11 pound 100W LED from Amazon. Out of the box the LED was of visibly poor quality; lit at a low voltage to inspect the quality of the individual diodes, it was clear that their lighting was very irregular. It was difficult to gauge the light quality without a point of comparison, but the CRI was obviously not above 80.

With the theory out of the way, it was time to experiment with various designs and try to first create the optics, to see if the project was feasible.

The theory having been mostly covered I will mostly focus on the build, with a bunch of photos. Note that this is only a prototype, I may or may not make a final guide of the build towards the end of the project (Although DIY Perks already explains it very well)!

Intro

As I got into second year of University and autumn approached, I revisited the idea of building a proper lighting system. At around this time, DIY Perks uploaded a new video, showing a completely different approach to building an artificial sunlight. This approach used the same principle of light collimation to achieve a realistic “sunlight” effect. However, instead of using a Fresnel lens, it used a parabolic dish to collimate the light rays. This allowed the light source to be one single high-power 100-500W LED.

Background

I started studying in Edinburgh, Scotland in 2019. While the University is as amazing as the city itself and the people were very welcoming, not to mention the beauty of of Scotland in general, there was one thing that I struggled with: the lack of sunlight. Now, I’m not claiming to be in the north-pole or anything but, admittedly, I quickly noticed through my first year that sunlight was fairly scarce in winter. We had only about 6 hours of daylight a day, and even that was usually covered by clouds and buildings as the sun would stay very low throughout the day.