Sunlight Inside is a new startup that was personally founded by a cleantech VC investor, Konrad Jarausch.  The company launched an Indiegogo campaign for a nice little desk lamp they’re calling “Bottled Sunshine” with a color-temperature changing module supplied from Lumenetix.  The Lumenetix system uses 5 color channels to reach 1660K-8000K and can maintain 90CRI from 2000K-6000K.  The desk lamp is designed to replicate the natural color-temperature daylight cycle automatically.  I like that they are realistic enough to include a good-old-fashioned cord switch and dimmer, while of course, being a Silicon Valley company, they also provide an app for complete control.

It will be interesting to see how far they get with a simplified desk lamp like this, as a lot of this type of functionality can already be delivered with systems like the Philips Hue series.  Their marketing is clear, walking that fine line between the aesthetic versus scientific advantages of controlling color temperature.  I personally found the “killer app” for a Hue system to be unifying the switching and control of 4 annoying-to-reach table/floor lamps in our living room.  My wife likes my simple two-scene setup – dim & 2700K or bright & 3500K.

The funny thing to me is that I pitched an idea for a small color-temperature shifting desklamp almost exactly like this at Color Kinetics about 10 years ago.  I proposed one extra trick – adding a flickering candle light mode.  But the white LED quality just wasn’t good enough yet…and far too expensive.

I’m always rooting for the little guys trying something different in the lighting industry…hopefully you find success!