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Comment by Hamuko | Hacker News Reader

Why would I go for a "good old incandescent bulb" when I can buy an RGB light and go for any mood I want for?

Why would you do that I don't know, but for me personally the reason is that LEDs tend to strobe (sometimes noticeably to peripheral vision) and do not emit a smooth continuous spectrum—unlike incandescent bulbs, they produce a narrow, spiky spectrum[0] and objects in your room may look unnatural as they reflect it[1]; this may be especially bad with some RGB LEDs but fundamentally is a property of all LED lights because physics.

[0] https://electronics.stackexchange.com/a/149686

[1] https://youtu.be/uYbdx4I7STg?t=682

> LEDs tend to strobe

So this friend of mine, peak performance oriented and into brain science, approached neurobiofeedback as part of it. He visited professionals who used an electroencephalograph for the purpose. The technician told him that recently they could not make it work properly, at apparently random times, and had to carry on diagnostic in the typical perplexing mystery. Turned out that when the artificial lights were on, suddenly, the EEG misbehaved, since a number of days. And exactly, since he placed LED lightbulbs in the lamp. They created interference with the EEG equipment.

Lightbulbs that interfere with the functioning of an EEG...

Hint and advice: to assess the "strobing" property of those LED lamps, look at them through a camera, such as that of a mobile phone: you will see different rates of flicker which will help assessing the product quality.

although flicker and electrical interference caused by the bulb are not necessarily connected. If you worry about EMI, you need to measure EMI.

Sure. That was a "moreover". But the link is that, from the possible silver-bullety initial idea of "aproblematic", the first (flicker) is a first breach of that idea and an "initial warning", which opens to the second (EMI)... In the realm of ideas and assumptions about the world, not in that of physics.

I agree! Man I have had so many shitty leds but I’m really quite pleased with my Hue’s.

I mean...what mood is red light for? When you want to feel like a reptile basking in a terrarium?

I’m on team having many light fixtures with dimmable warm light LED bulbs—adjust the mood via intensity and number of fixtures turned on (so to speak).

I actually set my bedroom lights to 100% red with a 5-minute auto-dimmer when I'm going to bed.

Or when I want my apartment to look like the red light district.

Somewhat dim red lights is my mood for needing to go pee in the middle of the night.

Red light without heat doesn't give the terrarium feel. But it can give an undersea late night feel or maybe an emergency situation feel.

Red light is for sleeping for me.

Because "pastel" is not "oil" is not "varnish" is not "ink"...

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