Bringing in the sun

Made on a Glowforge
1

My living room isn’t dark per-se, but with my eyesight I often need to use a flashlight during the day to see small things clearly - no direct sun makes it in.

I’v had some of the 50cm acrylic mirror panels for some time but never used them for anything, so this morning I did a test with them, propping up to reflect sunlight in thru my french doors on end end of the room. Lit up great, so…

Made a tripod plate adapter, three simple layers with a bit of fettling on the top layer seen here, which is actually the bottom, and slides onto the head.

image
image1008×756 63.1 KB

Mounted in on the head, provided VHB ready for the panels.

image
image1008×756 142 KB

Panels mounted, yes I’ll clean them off this evening…

image
image1008×756 125 KB

The result - 100% natural sunlight, when the sun is out. Takes a second to adjust as the sun moves across the sky. Won’t do me much good in winter as my yard gets very little sunlight for a few months.

image
image1008×756 38.7 KB

33 Likes
2

Now a little motorized tracking and Bob’s your uncle. Nice pattern, too!

11 Likes
3

Cute idea but a waste of what looks like a nice tripod when a bird bath or even a stick in the ground would work :slightly_smiling_face:

1 Like
4

There’s no adjustable ball mount on a stick or bird bath. The sun moves across the sky. The mount slides right out of the head.

3 Likes
5

A flat reflective surface and a slightly concave one at almost 90 degrees to the plane would put a broad bright area on the north face of the building most of the day even as the sun moved across. If the flat plane was water then the light would ripple in the wind

1 Like
6

It needs to shine thru a single glass panel of a french door, about 20" wide. I’m not trying to illuminate a wall.

2 Likes
7

An excellent use of materials on hand!
My great room is pretty dark the first half of the day…

3 Likes
8

We have very long eaves, which keeps direct sun off the windows other than sunrise and sunset. When you live in hot area your AC thanks you, however, I feel your pain, the rooms can get rather dark.

Interesting solution. Seems like a lot of work, but you know best.
We solved it by switching to LED lamps, when needed, in the active rooms.

4 Likes
9

Nice idea, reflecting it onto a mirror positioned on the inside could also give good directional control.

3 Likes
10

And here I am like a vampire with all my curtains pulled shut. There are some days that my wife comes home where I haven’t opened anything up yet and immediately opens everything up. We’re definitely on different ends of a spectrum :sweat_smile:

Cool idea, it reminds me of when my phone is on the seat in the car and the sun reflects off of it to blind me

7 Likes
11

Necessity is the mother of invention. Nice work.

3 Likes
12

Well that is certainly a unique use for mirrored acrylic. Maybe for your next phase you could do a kinetic sculpture that would move the light to play with your cat(s).

3 Likes
13

Reminds me of when I used to play with my handmirror shining light around my bedroom in the morning. I’d make circles, ovals, make them go fast or slow, dance into the corners and all manner of magic.

That’s a really nice way to bring the sun into your room.

3 Likes
14

Nice work!

2 Likes