But nothing has the quality of life impact of smart blinds. It’s the best, and probably only, way to reliably keep your sleep schedule in sync. Smart lightbulbs - four of the brightest you can buy - are nothing compared to a window on a cloudy day.
If you want your own, you can buy it, it's called: Parthenocissus tricuspidata or you can get the Parthenocissus quinquefolia.
It really does work!
You do need to manage windows and gutters. What you do is pull the vine of off the border of the window and leave it dangling in the air (a little bit of it). This signals to the vine that it reached the end of what it's sitting on, and it will stop growing there. (If you cut it instead, it thinks it has an opportunity.)
can you please elaborate on this? logic dictates that if you cover the whole thing with plastic (paint) it will affect the performance of the material (I assume reflecting light (paint) vs absorbing light (raw wood).
- You never have to move them
- In the summer (when the sun is higher) it blocks out lots of sun
- In the winter (when the sun is lower) it lets in more sun
https://www.house-energy.com/images/Overhang.gif
I feel like we design houses like we design cars and many other modern things, form over function and fix the problems by adding a ton of overcomplicated technologies.
If you have huge openings and no overhangs I'd go for something like that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPNMp6pMJjk
Then, for the lower floor we accomplish a similar effect with tall, deciduous plantings.
What I'm surprised at is how rare fake windows/skylights are. I mean, such products/companies exist, but they seem to be relatively niche, and accordingly expensive (as in "call our sales team for pricing" expensive), not really ready for your usual DIY/domestic consumer.
I think what we really need is monitor/TV companies producing low-res, high lumen screens for this purpose, hopefully mass produced. I think Sony has produced a "passive" screen ("the Frame") , that is effectively a matt tv mean to display slow/static images to replace hanging pictures (and even stuffs the electronics in the wall to keep a low profile), but it's still a luxury niche.
So around 470 W/m2 visible radiation.
At this point I gave up on blinds and put a shirt over my eyes to sleep. I thought about just covering the windows permanently but I don't relish that idea.
https://www.amazon.ca/Persilux-Blackout-Cellular-Protection-...
It's a total blackout, though it definitely benefits from the window being deeply inset; on a typical bedroom window at midday I expect a bunch of light would find its way around that.
bedroom is ultra-dark, with just a hint of light.
https://www.ikea.com/ca/en/p/trippevals-blackout-cellular-bl...
If the fabric itself isn't blocking light... You need better material. I have only ever had problem with light leakage in the edges, not in the fabric material.
I believe 'blackout thermal shades' is what to look for.
Installation is key - they need to be oversized, covering the entire window AND the trim, and they need to be carefully installed so that they touch the trim.
I use the Nidra ones primarily as I can blink without my eyelashes catching the mask
https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-sleep-mask/
Another wrap around option with audio are the SleepPhones, while not designed to go over your eyes they work well that way and before switching to the Nidra and A20 ear buds that was my primary headset for about a decade.
As to audio specifically, the Anker A20 work well even if you are a side sleeper
https://www.soundcore.com/products/sleep-a20-sleeping-earbud...
Notwithstanding the above, blackout blinds are awesome as long as they extend above and below and past the sides of the window frame. Can be quite low cost from places like Costco.
I lost it once, and bought two more, so that I would never be without one again. It’s the only sleep mask that works. It stays on all night. It does not leak light around the edges. Everything “shaped like your eyes” is a complete waste of time. This is the correct implementation of sleep mask, and I will never go back.
It’s super comfortable, and even slightly muffles noise since it wraps around your entire head. I do like the effect of good sealing ear plugs (Mack’s 31 Db only), but find them extremely uncomfortable to wear multiple days in a row. I’ll bring the Mack’s on vacation, just in case I am put next to an obnoxious snorer, there is very loud city noise all night, etc.
I don’t have issues sleeping in too late, because I actually get sleep with this thing, and after some time, I was just back on a normal rhythm, very consistently waking up at the same time.
I care deeply about sleep mask. Maybe it won’t work for everyone, but just in case it can help a single person, I am unloading my mask manifesto.
I'm just, you know, sort of neurotic about certain things, and I know I'm not alone here on HN. :)
I’d recommend a double rod, a blackout curtain on the rod closest to the window, and a “pretty” curtain on the outer rod. Gives you best of both worlds. Functional and pleasing, like at a hotel.
It's got some sharp edges - every time I've done a major auto-update it's broken something critical. You can run it alongside other controllers like the Hue Bridge, which is nice to have as a backup (since 90% of what most people connect is smart lighting). Probably the most useful simple automation I have is an motion activated dim light in the bathroom at night, but that's using Hue.
Then look at ESPHome, which is an ecosystem for making your own DIY sensors and controllers that can feed into HA. For example we have a Sensirion air quality sensor that triggers a smart switch connected to a fan if the particulate level gets high when cooking. You can go a very long way with on/off to control non-smart devices, and your sensors don't need to be particularly accurate (like absolute PM2.5) as long as the conditon you trigger on is repeatable.
The only thing to think about is what hardware ecosystem makes sense for you. For example there's at least four different competing standards for connectivity (WiFi, Zigbee, Z-Wave, Matter/Thread, etc). So getting a Zigbee dongle isn't a bad idea because then you can connect any IKEA or Hue device (among others).
AppDaemon[0] runs alongside it and is more "real" Python, it mostly just responds to events sent to it.
NodeRED has a direct integration and is (in my experience) best for complex state machines as you can easily debug them and actually see the logic work.
They also have a REST API to trigger things and a Websocket API if you need more real-time stuff (subscribing to events instead of querying states)
Then there is just straight up MQTT, where you need to do it all yourself.
What HA shines is that it tends to have ready-made community integrations with _everything_. And enough users for each that if something breaks, people will notice and it'll be fixed promptly.
The hue motion sensors pay for themselves pretty quickly.
The rest is zigbee and zwave switches and sensors. You can get cheap ones from ikea. You can get nicer ones from Zooz. I like Apollo for air quality sensors. The humidifier is the German brand Ventura. Zero maintenance. But it’s not smart so I got a power outlet that reports power usage. When it runs out of water the humidifier shuts off and the power goes to zero, so I have an automation that detects that and sends a message via the HA app.
Living in California and having fans move air around from cool rooms to warmer rooms has cut our AC bill significantly as a dc fan is a fraction of power consumption of a whole house AC. And also co2 levels stay much lower. Last week I set up my window fan to blow air in whenever it’s cooler outside then inside.
I have a ton of sleep problems and just wanna push back here a little... going for a brisk walk in the fresh air and sunshine every day works a lot better for me.