sunrise-shelf, wake up naturally

Do your regular mornings begin with the sun shining into your bedroom?

Being woken every morning by the screeching of a traditional electric alarm clock is one of the worst memories from my school days. Ever since I have longed to peacefully awaken with the warm sunbeams streaming into the bedroom as they do on sunny weekend mornings.
On top of that, especially if you come from a sunny spot on earth, as my wife does, the gloomy winter season can become quite daunting. I wanted to find a way to give her at least a bit of the sunshine that she so dearly misses. What bigger motivation could there be for engineering the perfect sunrise?

So I set out to create the solution!

From what I have heard since I started this inspiring journey, pretty much all of you feel the same about this topic of being woken by an awful alarm clock noise, time and time again. And even if you choose your favourite tune on your smartphone as your wake-up melody, rather than solving the problem, it tragically seems to give you a rather horrible feeling whenever you hear that melody ever after.

What I have been striving for is now reality! Meet the sunrise-shelf:
It is a stylish wooden shelf, a waking sunrise and a versatile reading light all in one. It is handmade, put together and shipped by us. Every single shelf goes through my hands.

As a wake-up-light it simulates dawn and a clear-sky sunrise over the course of half an hour, to give you a sensational start into the day:

Simply

• set your desired time of sunrise on the app,
• insert the plug from the dial into the socket on your smartphone
• and take a good night’s sleep.

May the dawn be with you!

This bedside application deliberately works without the use of any wireless connections. Set your phone to flight mode over night to reduce electromagnetic pollution and prevent anyone from disturbing your precious sleep.

The exact colour shades over the course of dawn and sunrise are inspired by the light that falls in through roof-top windows and playfully lights up our rooms on warm sunny mornings.
The warm-white and cold-white LEDs incorporated in the lighting-bar have an especially high Colour Rendering Index (CRI) so that they almost perfectly imitate the suns visible spectrum for different times of the day. Additionally the included coloured LEDs help simulate the spectrum-filtering by the atmosphere in the extremes, such as the very first daylight, allowing this bedroom light to simulate a deep blue sky at dawn that gradually fades into a lighter, friendly turquoise before displaying a brilliant warm white sunrise. The blue light-content is important to stimulate waking. Placed above your bed the sunrise-shelf realistically shines down upon you.

For whoever feels unsure about relying purely on lighting to wake up in time for important appointments, the app can tune in the included birdsong or any other tune on your smartphone once the sun has risen.
And what about letting the sun rise in your children’s bedrooms before you go to shake them out of bed for school?

The versatility of the inbuilt LEDs allows for far more lighting scenarios than just dawn and sunrise. For this reason the sunrise-shelf is equipped with the elegant control dial. With a click and swirl of the knob you can fade-in warm-white light for cosy reading, cold-white light for an activating work atmosphere or any fun bright colour that fits to your current mood.

The knob on the dial allows you to adjust the warm-white light especially far into a reddish dusk-like tone. This way you can easily achieve a relaxing evening atmosphere before going to sleep.

Additionally the dial will softly fade off the lights at a click of the knob and remember your last specific lighting choice for the next time you give it a click and it fades back on.
During dawn and sunrise it also allows you to magically set back the rise of the sun – by five minutes for every click – in case you decide you have a little more time to snooze.

The shelf is a handmade-in-Germany piece of furniture and comes in two versions: single and double with a length of approximately 80cm and 120cm respectively.

Natural materials are used where possible for a healthy bedroom environment: The shelf is crafted from smoothly sanded beech wood that is treated with pure linseed oil, which protects the wood and emphasises its colours.

Technical details:

The high-power white LED strips are super-efficient. With 105 lumens per watt they are at the upper end of the A+ rating and can therefore be noiselessly and passively cooled via a heat-dissipating aluminium sheet for long LED life (>35,000h). The reflective metal sheet is specifically curved to ensure a smooth and efficient light distribution inside the lighting-bar.

The quality of white light is evaluated with the CRI (Colour Rendering Index). The warm-white LEDs for morning and evening sunrays have a CRI of 92% and the cold-white LEDs for noon daylight have a CRI of 94% .

The single and double lengths feature a powerful brightness of 1660 lumens and 2430 lumens respectively at full sunrise. Set via the dial the light reaches a bright bed-space lighting value of 855 lumens and 1250 lumens respectively.

The shelf is rigid and stable and can carry pretty much whatever you would like to pile up on in, of course also depending on your wall substance. It has been tested for 10kg and will be rated as such.

For all those who like to be able to properly switch off gadgets the dial also features a mechanical ON/OFF switch that fully disconnects the controller and LEDs from the 24V power supply. (It must be switched on for the wake up light to work and if switched off the last used lighting value is not memorized.)

The cable length is 2.8 meters, so it requires a power socket within about 2.5 meters measured from the dial.

Wouldn’t it be awesome to softly wake up with dawn, no matter how early your work day begins, how early the kids have to go to school, or how long the winter nights get?
This product is made for everyone who has had such thoughts and maybe also for some who hadn’t yet taken the time to think about it.

The shelf design creates a stylish spot to safely place valuable bedside objects like your phone, glasses or a good book, instead of additionally lumbering up your bedside table with a bulky object.

It is designed to be super easy to set up. It comes fully assembled and requires only three hooks that are included in the set. Simply follow the instructions to measure your sitting height in bed, place the fixtures and hook it up. Once the shelf is mounted all fixtures are invisible!

The scientific background:

Depending on how much you have already read into the topic of the effect of different lighting on your body and psyche you may already be aware of the fact that blue light has an activating influence on our bodies. Special daylight lamps feature a high level of blue light and a high brightness to lower the body’s melatonin production, which sets the inner clock to daytime activity. At full sunrise the sunrise-shelf has the cold-white LEDs, which contain a large portion of the blue spectrum, set to maximum brightness together with the blue and green LEDs, as well as the warm-white and red LEDs that give the overall light the realistic warm shine and motivating brightness of clear-morning sunrays. After full brightness is reached the light of the sunrise-shelf slowly fades back into a cooler bright daylight colour.
For those who’d like to read more about the science behind controlling your awareness with light, the article “Blue-enriched white light to wake you up in the morning” on https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/03/190306100602.htm or the scientific report, that is cited therein, by K. Choi et al. from the “Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology” (KAIST) (can be found under DOI: 10.1038/s41598-018-36791-5) are worth looking into.

Support the sunrise-shelf to make this “dream come true”. Be an early bird and wake up with dawn whenever you wish by choosing one of the sunrise-shelf rewards.

Be part of the first product by sunrise! There will be more exiting sun-inspired lighting products to come.

The shelf set includes:

• sunrise-shelf with dial (number of single or double depending on chosen reward) and the following accessories:
• 24VDC power supply for 100-240V~50/60Hz outlets(*)
• three wall fixtures
• instructions in German and English.

The app will be available for download for free.

(*)For Cyprus, Ireland, Malta and the United Kingdom we will look into supplying the respective plug or an adapter.

The sunrise-shelves that you see on the pictures are very close to the production version. Small improvements will be made for the production version by the use of better tools that will achieve perfect shaping of the wooden parts.

The wake-up app for your smartphone must still be written. At the moment the prototype shelf is triggered with a standard alarm-clock app, but using it for the sunrise-shelf has some quirks that need to be changed to make it user-friendly. Having a custom made app written will only be feasible if the funding goal is reached.

Development timeline:
v - Concept design: December 2019
v - Electronics design and programming begin: January 2020
v - First working prototype: March 2020
v - Finalized design with perfected prototype: November 2020
v - Testing phase: November 2020 to January 2021
v - Campaign launch: March 2021

Coming up steps after successful funding:

• Ordering the app + designing the production version of the electronics: from March 2021
• Initiate CE certification: April 2021
• Setting up tools for production, ordering externally produced parts and run production tests: June 2021
• Ramping up production for early bird backers: August 2021
• Sending brand new sunrise-shelves out to you, the backers: begin at latest in September 2021

All early birds should receive their sunrise-shelf way before the next cold season (by the end of September). We will do our best to scale the production according to the amount of interest, so that everyone is served as soon as possible.

Shipping:

Shipping is available for EU countries, the United Kingdom and Switzerland. Additional funds may be requested once final shipping costs are calculated for specific locations. A table of the expected shipping costs is given in the last picture at the top of this page. All duties and additional fees for international shipments will be the backers’ responsibility. Especially with respect to the UK changes may occur within the coming months due to new regulations. We will do our best to keep the cost of shipping as low as possible.

It will be used to produce your sunrise-shelves. The funding goal is necessary to cover the steps shown in the timeline in the pictures above, which involve initial investment- and material-costs.

The main one-time cost factors in descending order are:
-tools and machines for production
-the app
-CE certification

The main running costs apart from manual work are:
-the valuable materials that go into the shelf