So, the other day (well, yesterday infact!) I was talking to one of my friends who was explaining how they use a SAD(Seasonal Affective Disorder) light to help them wake up in the morning. As mornings are something which I have a large difficulty in dealing with, I thought ‘I wonder if this will help…’. However, buying an SAD lamp just for a ‘what if’ moment is a little bit overkill – they range from £45 up to £$$$$ – so I decided to go the DIY approach.
So the main idea of an SAD light, and of the treatment they provide, is to expose your senses to daylight more during the winter months, when the amount of daylight is less from natural sources. So what I bought was an LED strip of Daylight LED’s, and a wireless RF remote to turn them on and off – as you can see in the header image!
The rest of the project is now just installing it – which consists of just sticking the LED’s along the top of my headboard, cable tying the controller on, and then just testing it! you can see the various steps in the gallery below:
It was complete luck that where I finished lined up, but it gave me a brilliant spot to attach the RF receiver. The only major changes I made was taping the power supply to the RF receiver (the socket was a bit lose), and putting tape over the BRIGHT BLUE LED on the power supply.
So, the LED strip set I bought was this one, and here is the RF Remote set. I did not notice that the remote was RF when I bought it, however it was a much better choice than an IR remote set, as it doesnt need line of sight.
I will find out if this helps when I want to get up, however as I am currently using it as the main light in my room, it will definitely be useful as a reading light!
Let me know in the comments if you have any questions, ideas, etc. about this setup, and if you would like to see more about this project or other projects of mine – I would like to build a proper alarm clock into this, replacing the RF remote at some point.