Travelling can take its toll on your body, mentally and physically. Lumo is a product that works to mitigate this through the production of 'good' light to help take the sting out of long layovers.
In order for the luminaire to fit into its environment best and deliver the optimum user experience, it was crucial that interacting with lumo was simple and intuitive for every user, no matter the jetlag.
'Good' light refers to the colour temperature and intensity of different light sources. By using these variables to mimic natural light we can hack our circadian rythm
It takes a special kind of LED to provide the full spectrum of colours and intensities required for 'hacking' your circadian rhythm, and the same goes for the driver that powers them.
The average airport experience consists of rushing around only to end up innevitably sitting twiddling your fingers for hours before finally getting onto a plane and switching off. Lumo works to add value to this period of waiting by providing it’s users with a much needed hit of healthy light before continuing on their journey.
One of the increasingly few constants we humans share with our ancestors of old is the day/night cycle. It doesn’t matter how industrial we become, how addicted to our phones we get, or, how disconnected from nature we grow, the sun will rise and fall day after day. This eternal cycle has continued alongside human evolution resulting in the development of our Circadian Rythmn. To put it simply, this biological process makes us feel awake and alert as the sun rises and travels through the sky, and sleepy when evening roles around and the sun begins to set. This can be replicated artificially by mimmicking natural light with wide spectrm LEDs (2,700k-6000k @ 2-10,000 lux).
Given the intended environment and resulting clientelle that Lumo was designed for, there were some obvious restrictions on the form that it could take. For example, one of the core requirements for a light that helps passengers travelling from different timezones adjust is that it can be easily tailored to each user individually, ruling out the possibilty of something like a chandelier. A desk lamp was considered too, but eventually ruled out to accomodate for another of the core requirements, it simply wasn’t possible to produce the intensity of light required to receive the health benefits with the LED hardware that currently exists.
Having the right colour of light is only half the battle when it comes to ‘healthy’ light. Without the right brightness, you may as well sit in the dark. The easiest way to accomodate for this restriction is to increase surface area. Thankfully, for this project, that solution worked perfectly for our design. Not only did pivoting to a ‘partition-style’ luminaire provide the user some additional privacy, it also cast light in a manner reminiscent of a natural light shining through a window, and as we’ve established, natural light is the healthiest of all.
An accidental benefit of increasing surface area to solve the brightness problem, is the creation of an abstract partition. This means that Lumo not only helps your body sync with new timezones and rest, it also provides privacy to rest, work, or anything inbetween.
A product design project wouldn’t be complete without adequate consideration given to the aesthetic of the end result. Lumo was designed with airline lounges in mind and therefore, a level of quality and experience would be expected of it by its users. To ensure that the luminaire would look at home in these premium settings, without standing out too much, a great deal of consideration was given the material choice and form. We worked hard to strike a balance between minimal but not boring, luxurious and functional, Intuitive without shouting.
The innards of Lumo are relatively simple, consisting of 2 primary circuits that both feed into or out of an Arduino Uno R3. The first of those circuits is used to receive and process the data from the touch capacitor that’s mounted on top of the base. As the user slides their finger along it, the value will increase or decrease.
The second circuit is the one that produces and tunes the light. Taking the data from the capacitor and feeding that into some code, a colour temperature value is sent to an EldoLED Linear Drive 222d where it is translated into a value the LEDs can understand to produce the correct colour temperature. Powering tunable white LEDs like those used in Lumo is no mean feat, instead of running off a 12V plug, these needed a 24v/240W driver to provide them with enough power to deliver light at the correct intensity.
In theory, programming the LEDs to react to a user interacting with the touch capacitor should have been simple. X value on the capacitor = X colour temp on the LEDs. In reality though, due to the kind of LEDs required to deliver the full spectrum of colour temperature and intensity required, this was not the case.
With low voltage RGB LEDs like those found in most teenagers bedrooms they operate on fewer channels that can be cotnrolled directly by an Arduino or similar micro computer. The setup we needed consisted of tunable white LEDs (2,700-6,000k), a Driver, and a Linear Drive which is what allows us to control the colour at all. Linear Drives and Arduinos are not designed to work with eachother, they use different protocols and even something as theoretically simple as connecting them proved to be an interesting challenge.
Eventually we got it all working though, the Arduino would take data from a users interaction with the touch capacitor, process it, and then send a value to the Linear Drive to alter the colour of the lighting.
The lighting element of the Lumo consists of lengths of Alluminum U-channel cut to various lengths with the corners mitred so they slot together seamlessly. Initially we discussed welding these lengths but given the timeframe we were working within, ultimately opted for 90º brackets to hold the corners together as well as give slightly more flexibility for potential tolerance issues when assembling. These Alu lengths were drilled and countersunk to mount threaded stand-offs to simplify the mounting process of the sandblasted acrylic diffusers.
Once the base assembly of the metalwork was complete, it was masked and powdercoated, Black on the outside and slightly off-white on the inside to help with the distribution of light.
The base of the luminaire has a fairly simple construction, primarily to contrast with the more abstract lighting portion of the product, and partly to provide the stability required for the luminaire to function as intended. The core of the base is a morticed box, however on the top and right face, a laser cutter was used to carve the channel for the capactior to sit in, and to engrave the colour indicators on top. The whole box was then stained dark to create the feel of a hardwood like mahogany or oak and capitalise on the connotations of luxury and quality, without having to face the cost for what was ultimately a scale prototype.
Outside of securing the metal portion to the wood, there wasn’t much to the final assembly of Lumo. The rear of the base needed to openable to allow tweaks to be made to the programming and wiring (just in case…) and the vinly needed to be mounted over the capacitor to hide it and serve as the final aesthetic touch of the product. Afte that, it was just some rubber feet to stop the light from sliding around, and it was ready for submission.