29.12.2024 Let there be [smart] light?

 ~o~

  Sunday 29th 42F/5.6C. Continuing grey and drizzly.

 Up at 6.45 after yet another quiet night. I was dreaming about stacking camp beds. My wife was scornful. A chilly 60F/15.6C in the room. I'll have to light the stove. Then tidy up. The sheer quantity of packaging and literature involved in IKEA purchases is prodigious! 

 10.00 A more comfortable 69F/21C in the room. I have been playing with my IKEA lighting in the glass display cabinet . The "Styrbar" remote control now works from right across the room. To dim and switch the lights on and off via the PS/driver box. The magic in this, is that I can adjust the overall brightness. To achieve that air of mystery. Which was provided by the single overhead bulb but lost with the addition of all the extra LED lights. Now I can still enjoy even lighting throughout the display case. 

 A single Styrbar remote can control multiple PS/driver boxes. Alternatively, it occurs to me, that a second remote could control a second driver box. To provide control over individual lights. I am still experimenting with strip and spot lights for downward shelf lighting. To lift the brightness of the middle shelves of relatively, dark coloured glass.

 The LED strip lights rather overpower the spots for brightness. Yet provide more even lighting. While, simultaneously, the strips can be more easily hidden behind the glass ornaments. Thanks to their linear form factor. The spots are slightly too bulky to hide easily but provide a more pleasing down light. Albeit far more localized.

 Dimming the strips alone on a separate power supply might solve this. By subtly dimming the strips to match the overhead spots. I have had a new idea. Leave the spots at full strength but dim only the strips. I have two power supplies/driver boxes to play with but only one remote control. With the intention of lighting the glass cabinet in the kitchen with the spare. Individual dimming didn't work. I prefer overall dimming. With all lights controllable on the one PS and remote. 

 Of course there is a home control app. Including smart lighting. Sadly the Dirigera "gateway" access box is foolishly priced compared to their other lighting products. 500kr is £56 in ye olde monie. It controls other stuff of course. Which I don't have and are never likely to. It's a lot of money just to adjust the mood lighting in a single display case! So, no thanks.

 16.00 44F/6.7C. Heavy overcast with a cold breeze. I have been toing and froing with a wheelbarrow. Collecting logs from the trailer and stacking them in the greenhouse. This was safer, for my health, than trying to push the loaded trailer. 

 Then I dumped the IKEA cardboard packaging in the shed. Before lifting a large, stone slab from the greenhouse threshold. It was causing problems with opening the sliding doors. So I had to undermine it. To let it sink well clear of the door track. It has been a nuisance for years. Though that greenhouse door was hardly ever opened in the past. Until I cleared the greenhouse and started stacking firewood against the house wall out there. 

 I took one of the recycling bins along the drive. To be emptied early tomorrow morning. It was drizzling, breezy and very dark. Thank goodness for LED torches!

 Dinner was supposed to be poached eggs on toast. My mind wandered. I had a frying pan heated and oiled before I realised my mistake. It was too late to go back to Plan A and it made a pleasant change. 😋

 

  ~o~