My startup has been working on a virtual skylight that produces a pretty good proxy for feeling like you are outside in the sun even if you are underground. The key invention is in collimating a large area light source so it travels in a straight line and appears to be miles away. We will be showing it at a conference in Philadelphia next week if anyone is interested.
Https://Innerscene.com/products
Coelux has a nice product, compared to it ours takes up 14 times less space in the ceiling for the same viewable area, the sun is at true infinity so you can create arrays where the sun seamlessly follows you as you walk around, it has dynamic spectrum and dimmable, price is half, weighs ~10X times less so structural install shipping is easier/cheaper, more energy efficient, programmable, just to name a few...
I haven't seen either product in person, but from looking at youtube videos of both, it seems like CoeLux has a clearly defined, properly round sun, while with your product, the sun looks fuzzy and cross-shaped, like viewed through a diffraction grating [1]. Am I correct in this characterization?
I'd say they are pretty similar, Coelux may be slightly less diffusive but it's beam divergence angle is pretty high so it doesn't hold up for very much distance compared to ours - you can see it spreads out into a non-rectangular shape on the wall.
Likely, but it isn't too hard to imagine how that could be fixed for an even greater cost. I wonder how the two products work.
I'd probably shine an array of narrow-beam LEDs through a sheet of aerogel. (the aerogel disperses the blue light) If the LEDs are on long horizontal rods that can rotate, that lets the angle change. You'd need the beams focused down to about half a degree, with at least a dozen viewed in a circle of that size from the perspective of a tall person under the light.
Another way is just an RGB array, with different lenses on the different colors. The blue gets a fish-eye lens, while the green and red get focused down to about half a degree. Again there can be rods that rotate, and at least a dozen LEDs need to be in a circle of half a degree when viewed by a tall person under the light.
It took me a few reads through, because I had the same reaction you did. No, the commenter is claiming those benefits for their own product, and just says their competitor's product is "nice".
In some areas we sell through Lighting Agencies, Distributors, and contractors who will set their own prices and markups. If you let me know where you are located, I can give you a number - but as rough guide, in the USA it is somewhere around $15-$20k for a 40x20 inch unit. We will be announcing a new version next week.
If you get this down to around $5k I bet you'd have a much larger market of apartment dwellers such as myself. Any hope of getting there in the next few years?
