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Sunlit Computers with Peter Veto and Liliana Lettier of Pixun · Sunlight Matters

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_03: and then sitting in front of a screen from before sunrise to after sunset, different time zones, all of that.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_03: So my symptoms really became exacerbated from, I think, a really, really chronic exposure to screens.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_03: When I really started to feel like these symptoms were so severe and tied to the amount of time I spent in front of a screen and the amount of time I spent under unnatural lights, I realized that the light thing and especially the screen time was like a huge, huge part of when my symptoms would really dial up.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_01: It's fascinating because so many of us spend our lives in front of screens and we then complain about tiredness and headaches and eye strain.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_01: I'm only just beginning to realize that they may all be kind of light related.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: When you kind of reflect on the kind of the world we live in, if we are at Most of us are under LED light, staring at computer screens.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_01: We're then probably exacerbating it by staring at screens, you know, in the evening.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_03: Absolutely.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_03: Our interest and our focus on this light story, it's because the part of light that is important to all of these physiological things is not the visible part.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_03: It's all the other parts of it that we don't see.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_04: About this endeavor that you are undertaking, like creating a is solar powered, I mean, everybody's like, that's so much effort, like, why would you do that?
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_04: But then given the fact that we spend like massive time of the day in front of these screens, it's actually a healing device then, potentially, right?
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_04: Nurturing parts of your cells that are receptive to these frequencies.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_05: On top of that, those cells which are the most sensitive are indeed involved when we look at the display.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_05: In that sense, displays are the most impactful.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_05: If you sit in a daily room...
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_05: Your most sensitive cells and the vast, vast majority of your retinal cells are exposed to the display's light pretty much alone.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_03: The solar collector is the crucial part.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_03: The light that is coming through the fiber optics through your screen is the same, not just mimicking, but it is the wavelength of the sun that you are meant to be exposed to.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_03: from sunrise to sunset.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_03: So to say that in a different way, the circadian rhythm and the circadian cues and the circadian information that your body is meant to respond and track throughout the day is coming through the screen.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Sunlight Matters, the podcast that reconnects us with the sun.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: Join us as we explore the power and influence of our star, the force at the heart of everything.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: Each episode, we speak with leading experts to uncover the ways sunlight shapes our world.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_01: So welcome to the latest episode of Sunlight Matters.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_01: And joining us, we have Peter Vetto and Liliana.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm not going to try and pronounce your surname, I'm afraid, Liliana, because I am terrible with Welcome both of you.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_01: So, Peter, Liliana, would you be able just to give a bit of background to yourselves and then we can talk about Pixum, the company that you work for?
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_03: Absolutely.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_03: I can start off.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_03: So yeah, Liliana Lettieri, and I joined Peter at Pixton a little over a year ago, I guess.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_03: And my background is in biology, and I was an academic researcher for about a decade and studied how signals and light act in the environment to communicate essentially and change behaviors among organisms so I studied fishes but you know also other organisms largely in the sea so corals and seaweed and all kinds of things and eventually made my way to the commercial industry and so made delete from academia into business and spend another decade or thereabouts working in the consumer electronics world.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_03: So I worked as a program manager helping take initial prototype designs through, you know, whatever, how many layers of technical review and then getting that to a manufacturer.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: And you have a dog as well it turns out yeah hi
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_03: puppy so she yeah yeah so the way that we would work is that we would take products from initial design and then make sure that you have a product that can be manufactured at scale and then those products would go into people's homes and they were largely in the consumer electronics and networking space.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_03: So broadband gateways and Wi-Fi routers and satellite streaming devices, that kind of thing.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_03: And then I had some health issues that arose that we could get into later, but that brought me to meet Peter.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_03: And then, yeah, it sort of became evident that we were a good team to sort of try to push things forward.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_03: at Pixson.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: Fantastic.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_01: So Peter, tell us about yourself and how and why you started Pixson.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I guess one reason was also my professional background, which was, we started with research similar to Liliana, but my side was human vision.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_05: So I was studying psychophysics, how we perceive things for over a decade.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_05: And towards the end of this, I also developed some symptoms of light's sensitivity and try to solve these.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_05: And that led me to daylight, which did not come through my profession because funny enough, my profession has very little to say about that.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_05: But practice and the experience of many light sensitive people really shows that daylight can help with such symptoms.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_05: And so it did for me as well.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_05: And meanwhile, that was six, seven years ago, I was still a postdoc and I was mainly working in dark labs because that's where we carry out experiments.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_05: So I was during the day mainly exposed to electric lighting and many displays where I was also building experimental display setups.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_05: So I did have some affinity to how to work with displays.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_05: But there it became obvious that when I went up to the office and My setup was such that the sun was glaring from the front, so it was shining from behind the display.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_05: So I had to block the window just to look at the same crappy spectrum and flicker that I do through the day anyway.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_05: So that's when I started to think that I should just remove the backside of the display and let the sunshine through the display.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_05: And I started to build from there, first just for myself, just prototyping, and then it grew bigger very slowly and gradually through experiment.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_05: And I realized that using ambient light is very, very finicky and it doesn't really work in practice.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_05: And that's how we arrived to the actual working solution of using a separate solar collector.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: So can you just talk a bit about the Pixon setup as well?
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_01: And then I'd really like to come back to the light sensitivity side of things as well.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_01: But what does Pixon actually enable and how does it work?
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so I can take that.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_03: So we are using rooftop or external solar collectors that through a series of lenses, collect and concentrate the full spectrum of wavelengths from the sun.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_03: And then using fiber optics, those photons, that sunlight is then driven, concentrated into the back of the screen.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_03: So what you're seeing is a screen that actually emits the full spectrum of sunlight and at a brightness that is more than you would get from ambient light going through reflective layers.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: So in terms of what is happening is the light is being collected and sent down the optic cable there's no electricity involved in that process is there or is it so it's purely light based?
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, exactly.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_03: It's analog light just concentrated and delivered through the screen.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_01: So we're all sat, I mean, because we're on an online studio staring at screens which are not emitting, you know, light, which I guess would have any of the sort of wavelengths that you're talking about in terms of sunlight.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, so what are people normally getting from their computer screens?
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's an interesting point, right?
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_03: So there has been an evolution within the technology of the lighting that is typical in screens, but currently a lot, you know, the majority of the screens probably, they have a combination of lights that is sort of generally called PC LED.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_03: It's a wavelengths that are all in the visible part of the spectrum.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_03: So let's say if you were to look at UV to far infrared that's present in regular sunlight, it's sort of a large normal distribution, whereas the light that we see that is allowing us to see the images in our screen is a quite narrow selection within the visible part of the spectrum.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_03: And it happens to be quite enhanced in the blues and the shorter wavelengths for a number of reasons, though, primarily because those are the most energy-saving parts of the spectrum to employ.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_04: Sorry, Dave, just a quick question.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_04: Can you maybe also dive into the differences between OLEDs and common TFT or LED screens?
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, sure.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_05: Yes.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_05: So as screens evolved, of course, that changed a little bit.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_05: But all of these technologies are based on an RGB spectrum because that's what is required for our digital lives.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_05: And the whole concept is based on that our vision is very, very simple.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_05: So it is really enough to present a red, green and blue spike within the spectrum and create a large, large number of colors.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_05: In fact, you can even create more saturated colors in this way than what we would see in natural reality.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_05: And so basically all screen technologies utilize this concept.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_05: And the ones that Liliana described before with regular LCDs, first using CCFL backlights, later PC LEDs, they provide, let's say PC LEDs provide a narrower blue spike and a broader orange hump next to it.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_05: And the two together, filtered by the LCD for RG and B, give a fairly narrow band RGB spectrum.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_05: Now with OLEDs and with micro LEDs and various other technologies.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_05: Of course, quantum dots were added on top of these.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_05: So there are many variations to both LCDs and OLEDs.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_05: But basically what happens is that this can get further reduced to narrower spikes in the red, green, and blue.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_05: But the principle is the same.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_05: And then our principle is kind of going in the opposite direction, that we want more natural colors, but most of all, we want the physiological effects of the whole spectrum in including near-infrared.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_05: So we would let through as much of the spectrum as possible, while, of course, still creating a colored image.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_05: Just as in nature as well, with daylight, you can see all the colors.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_05: So obviously, it's not just RGB, which can create all the colors that we need for an image.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_04: So your technology is not just replacing the backlighting of a display with sunlight, but it also changes the filtering of the RGB channels in order to let more
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_05: spectrum...
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_05: optimized indeed for the sunlight that we use as the backlight source.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm going to ask a really dumb question because I use the nighttime setting on my iPad when I'm reading at night, which I'm beginning to understand is very bad for me.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_01: But the red light or the red shift settings on the iPad, they're not doing anything then from what you're saying in terms of infrared.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_01: They are pure changing the kind of the way that the colours are displayed and I know that probably sounds a very simplistic question but I think you know the way these technologies are sold will kind of are there when you sort of talk about redshift or whatever in terms of the displays themselves people assume that there's less blue light so it must be better for them and that may not be the case is that right?
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_05: It is slightly better indeed if you look at nighttime use and how much your sleep is going to be disrupted.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_05: And to some degree, potentially also because of the reduced harmful effects of short wavelength flight.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_05: So basically, shorter wavelengths, particularly in the blue range and the shorter part of the blue range, basically accelerate the aging of the eye, thereby contributing to age-related macular degeneration, et cetera, but also developmental problems like myopia.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_05: And this can be reduced if you just change the colors of the image so that the blue component is relatively smaller.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_05: Now, this also depends on your hardware.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_05: So with an LED backlit LCD, you can only go so far because the backlight itself always leaks through the display kind of regardless of what colors you have.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_05: A good example of this, which you could already experience with older technologies, if somebody was watching TV in a room and the image was a warm image, let's say an orangish image on average, if you looked at the window at night from the outside, you could always see who's watching TV because it was blue, right?
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_05: So that's kind of the same thing.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_05: You see all the colors, maybe you don't even see blue color, but there's a lot of blue light still in it.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_05: Now with OLEDs, it's a little bit easier to reduce the blue separately because the three channels can be totally separate.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_05: All of this goes at the expense of color, however.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_05: So there's a trade-off.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_05: So yeah, in short, it is usually better than nothing, especially if you are sensitive or if you want to protect your sleep, but it can definitely not provide all the benefits of full-spectrum light.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_05: it as you mentioned near infrared obviously the hardware is limited it cannot it cannot even radiate deep red let alone near infrared so it yeah it's a band-aid basically
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_01: So I want to come back to you.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_01: You talked about sort of having light sensitivity issues and then this forced you or made you want to look at a solution.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_01: Can you just sort of explain about what those issues were?
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_05: On whose side actually could refer to both of us?
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry, on your side, Peter.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_05: Well, for me, it was, I guess, mainly because I was indoors.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_05: My sleep was also kind of off.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_05: So I tended to go to work late and then work late hours.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_05: And I was mainly in front of displays when I started to work more extensive hours.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_05: And so one symptom that I never, ever had before was headaches.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_05: And then you just get this eye strain feeling.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_05: Which in my case wasn't really itching or dry eyes.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_05: It was more like, yeah, just a feeling that, you know, you cannot do this more.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_05: Or like you start to see artifacts.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_05: I definitely see...
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_05: issues with crowding so for instance when there are several vertical lines I have a hard time counting them and that can be exacerbated by flicker that's definitely what I experience much more if I sit a lot in front of computer screens and I used to be myopic so the myopia symptoms also came back even though I kind of trained myself out of it so normally I'm not myopic but I feel if I sit too much in front of displays and don't go out Even today, I can feel that if I don't go out from inside for a day or more, when I do, my vision is blurrier.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_05: So these kind of symptoms.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_05: But digitalized eyestrain can be any kind of symptoms caused by displays.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_05: So for many people, it includes dry eyes, red and itchy and achy eyes, all kinds of headaches, migraines, which I do not have.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_05: But at that time, I had other types of headaches.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_05: So stuff like that in general.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_01: So, and in terms of like then the process that you started going, well, you know, the display seems to be the issue for me and therefore I'm going to kind of go down the process of looking at alternatives and how to bring in a sort of broader spectrum.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_01: That's right, isn't it?
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_05: Yes, it is.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_05: Well, the physiological aspects of vision that I studied do not relate to this too much.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_05: So first I really had to dig into what is happening.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_05: And that's when I saw that, oh, there's so much more going on than what we learn about when we learn how the various receptors work together in the eye to create vision, because this is mainly not about vision.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_05: And so that's how I arrived to daylight and started thinking about how to incorporate daylight into the display.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_05: Yes.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_01: Fantastic.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_01: And Liliana, it sounds like you arrived at a point where you were in EMF heaven and that may have been having an impact on you.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_03: Absolutely.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_03: So it's funny when my symptoms sort of came to a head, I had recently moved to working from home out of an office that was, like you said, sort of EMF But then into an internal, you know, home office that was a studio where my, you know, all of my networking devices were basically underneath my bed.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_03: And then, you know, sitting in front of a screen from before sunrise to after sunset, all kinds, you know, different time zones, all of that.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_03: So my symptoms really became became exacerbated from, I think, a really, really chronic exposure to screens.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_03: So I had had problems before with insomnia back in grad school when I was in front of screens, you know, writing my dissertation.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_03: That's when I got like a really pretty bad insomnia that was something that I had struggled with before.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_03: And then this time around, when it sort of all came to a head, the insomnia was paired with, you know, digestive issues, headaches, hot flashes, night sweats, all these sort of metabolic, you know, just problems that all felt very, you know, like my quality of life was really, I was really struggling.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I was, you know, just kind of barely keeping it together.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_03: And at that time, you know, when I would go to the doctor and sort of say, oh, I'm struggling with all these things, you know, perimenopause is sort of what always came up.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_03: And that made sense to me, you know, sort of timing-wise.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_03: I was like, okay, yeah, that could be it.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_03: But when I really started to feel like these symptoms were so severe and so really, really felt tied to the amount of time I spent in front of a screen and the amount of time I spent under unnatural lights.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_03: I started, you know, putting my biology and research hat back on and really started diving back into like, what else is going on here?
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_03: Because this feels a lot more acute than just like, oh, you're, you know, reaching the menopause years.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_03: So, so yeah, so when I started to dive into that, I realized that the light thing and especially the screen time, time was like a huge, huge part of when my symptoms would really dial up.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's fascinating because I think, you know, so many of us spend our lives in front of screens and we then complain about tiredness and headaches and eye strain and all these other things.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_01: But, you know, I mean, I'm only just beginning to realise that they may all be kind of like related, you know, and it's sort of fascinating to hear that you're both kind of been on this sort of personal journey, which is then ended up with you saying well actually this isn't kind of good enough anymore and you know I guess when you kind of reflect on the kind of the world we live in if we are at work most of us are under LED lights staring at computer screens.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_01: We're then probably exacerbating it by staring at screens, you know, in the evening.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_01: Like, you know, I've got a rather large television, I should say.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and that I presume is just sort of blaring out blue light as well, you know, because so it's sort of, we're sort of surrounded by all of these things.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_01: And these are the things that could be making us feel
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_03: not, you know, subpar.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_03: physiological things is not the visible part.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_03: It's all the other parts of it that we don't see.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_03: As a biologist, my background was how do different organisms see and how do they respond to cues, whether those are chemical or visual or whatever they are.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_03: They could be mechanical.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_03: There's all kinds of different ways that cues can impart different responses.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_03: From billions of years ago, from three and a half billion years ago, the smallest phryonobacteria, single-celled organisms that were first trying to get away from UV and go towards the part of the spectrum that they can use the best, which is generally the blues, those organisms have all the machinery or, you know, at least had a large part of machinery that has retained through evolutionary history, this ability to sense and respond to many parts of the spectrum.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_03: And the majority of those parts of the spectrum are not the ones that we as, you know, modern primates see.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_03: You know, we went through through so many stages of evolution, both as organisms and as mammals in recent times, to sort of dial in to figure out what our brains can process that will help us to survive.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_03: And those parts of the spectrum and the machinery that we use to see those things is a narrow slice of what our bodies as organisms and as as far back as life itself, can respond to, right?
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_03: The initial phototaxic response, meaning sense light and move towards or away from it, depending on what suits your survival, that is fundamental to life.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_03: And it helped build life.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_03: And it went all the way from UV to all the way into the far infrared.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_03: And that still lives in us, in our cells.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_03: despite what narrow band that we see.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_04: This is so wild because what you describe, it really makes it clear how fundamental that is.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_04: And thinking about this endeavor that you are undertaking, like creating a display that is solar powered.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, everybody's like, that's so much effort.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_04: Like, why would you do that?
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_04: You know, like it's so much more complicated.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_04: It's probably much more expensive.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_04: But then given the fact that we spent like massive time of the day in front of these screens, it's actually a healing device then potentially, right?
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, and and nurturing parts of your cells that are receptive to these frequencies, which is not obvious because we use displays to just perceive information.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_04: It's not about anything else.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_04: We don't care about it because we don't know, but you have the awareness, and this is what obviously drives you to build these displays.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 28:23
  UNKNOWN: Okay.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_05: Oh no, no, carry on.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, thanks.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_05: I just wanted to add that on top of that, those cells which are the most sensitive are indeed involved when we look at the display.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_05: And that's not the case with pretty much any other electric light source.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_05: So in that sense, displays are the most impactful.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_05: And in most lighting settings.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_05: Otherwise, for general lighting, of course, it's oftentimes mixed with daylight, which makes it somewhat better depending on the situation.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_05: And that's not the case with displays, which are designed not to reflect any of the ambient light.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_05: So even if you sit in a daylit room, your most sensitive cells and the vast, vast majority of your retinal cells are exposed to the display's light pretty much alone.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's amazing.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_01: So can you talk about, like, I guess the challenge that you have?
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_01: Because, I mean, I had a look at a video of the display and it really is quite impressive when you actually have the daylight setting on how vibrant everything becomes.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_01: But if I was to buy one, I would need to get a solar collector, wouldn't I?
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_01: You know, so can you just talk through, I guess, the nuts and bolts of it as part And, you know, either one of you in terms of responding to that.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_03: Sure, I'll jump in.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so the solar collector is a crucial part, right?
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_03: And when I first met Peter, you know, it took me a little bit of questioning and going back and forth to really wrap my head around what this all meant as a system.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_03: And so, you know, coming from the home electronics world, I kind of made the jump, like the analogy, right, to, oh, like a satellite dish, right?
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_03: Like we used to put a of the house to get the signal that would then come into our homes to bring us the football game or whatever, whatever information we were receiving from that rooftop device.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_03: So this is similar in that the information that we're gathering with these solar collector, they look like a bulb, it looks like a big dome.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_03: That information is just the full spectrum of light so the intention is to just gather and collect and concentrate sunlight with these lenses that are in this dome that need to be you know exposed to the sun so they track you know with the location of the sun and throughout the day then what that means is that the light that is coming through the fiber optics through your screen is the same not just mimicking but it is the wavelengths of the sun that you are meant to be exposed to from sunrise to sunset.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_03: So to say that in a different way, the circadian rhythm and the circadian cues and the circadian information that your body is meant to respond and track throughout the day is coming through the screen.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_03: So again, it's sort of a solar collector that's set out on a rooftop or somewhere that it's exposed to the sun.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_03: And then fiber optics, the same kind of fiber optics that are used in home networking that would connect to your broadband device, that is just hooked to the back of this special screen that has the internal workings to be able to take that concentrated light and make it, you know, diffuse and homogenized so that your experience as a computer user is the same as you would experience.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_04: How thick does the cable need to be?
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_03: Peter, I think it's just less than a centimeter.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_03: I don't think they're incredibly thick.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_04: And then the brightness is comparable to a common display or is it brighter or how is this?
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_05: Absolutely.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_05: It all depends on the installation.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_05: So obviously, and this is also where your product comes into play, the installation needs to be scaled to where it takes place.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_05: Of course, closer to the equator, everything works more efficiently.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_05: But such installations have also been done in Sweden, in Denmark, and they work just as well.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_05: It's just that obviously the size needs to scale with that.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_05: And the same with the display.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_05: So for the display, the amount of light, so to say, that we need is similar to what is used in a luminaire.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_05: And then you can choose how you use that light.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_05: Of course, a larger display would require more light.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_05: But in this respect, it all works the same way.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_05: And indeed, The cable is pretty much like the mains cable for any device that you have at home.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_05: It's a slight little bit less flexible, but you can thread it through the walls just the same.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_05: So the installation is also a fairly standard process in that regard.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_05: And the core of the cable is maybe half a centimeter.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_05: So it depends on the type of cable, but in general, it could be around five millimeters.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_05: one display
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_01: so I mean I I think what is potentially going to happen is people are going to wake up to let's call it the sickness of work where you know lighting and displays are causing people to live lives which are subpar because they don't feel well and so I think if I was a large corporate you know would I be able to buy a large array which sat on top of my building, which then, you know, could power many different monitors or, I mean, how would that work?
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_05: Absolutely.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_05: That's how it works.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_05: And the larger installations are more efficient as well.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_05: So eventually the price also depends on that.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_05: And so far the existing companies selling such products have been more focused on B2B.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_05: So it is slightly more efficient and a more well-built process.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_05: as for how to illuminate, let's say, a large office building.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_05: But the same principle also applies to, let's say, an individual home or even just having a small collector, which is portable and light and which you can place on your balcony without even needing special installation and which alone could feed just one display.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_05: So that's obviously per lumens.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_05: It's a more pricey option, but it works based on the same principle.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_01: And as you said, Peter, I think that the, like, I think about the Middle East, where, you know, there's increasingly acknowledgement that there's a health crisis due to people not going outside at all, because I think they, like this summer, they had over 50 degree days, you know, it's almost impossible to go outside, but they have plenty of sunshine.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_01: It strikes me that in terms of, you know, as Gail described it, having scratched I mean, it's almost a no brainer to kind of think about incorporating this as part of your overall network and how you kind of do things from a work perspective, isn't it?
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_05: Absolutely, yes.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_05: And then the energy consideration also comes to play where you have more control with this kind of daylighting than with windows, where obviously low-e glass developed for a reason because it contributes a lot to the heat load of the building.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_05: And here we can select what we filter out and what we keep in the spectrum.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_05: So everything is really tunable in that regard.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_05: And the use of the light is more directed as well.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_05: So So if you bring some amount of energy into the room, especially through a display, that light is used much more efficiently than if it just comes in as ambient light through the windows in terms of heat management.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_04: So, but that practically means that I could get a sunburn in my face if I sit in front of the computer eight hours a day.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_01: A tan, I think you mean.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, you're right, obviously.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_05: It's funny that many people ask about UV.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_05: By default, we will filter that out, but there is an option indeed to keep UV in, or at least part
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_04: of the UV.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_04: I will keep it
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_05: in.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_05: You can.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_04: Cool.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_04: So it's also like, it's obviously also transmitting infrared, so it heats up the room, like as you said before, in the range where the display is radiating, obviously we I mean, it's infrared frequency, so it is warming up.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_05: So here it's probably meaningful to separate near-infrared from longer-wave infrared because the latter contributes more to heat, but the former is most likely the one that is most important physiologically.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_05: And that's where nearly all the studies that we base our reasoning on shows that these frequencies are very essential for recovery and also concurrently to short-wavelength exposure, which is a stressor to tissues, when you also have long wavelength deep red and near infrared frequencies that counteracts the tissue damaging potential of blue light for instance and these do not contribute so much to heat so basically you can leave the near infrared in and that is what we do but cut out the longer wave infrared so that you are not contributing too much to the heat gain inside
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_04: and can this be done like the adjustment of the frequencies you want to to leave into your display can this be edited like on a daily base or is this something that needs to be decided up front because I mean it could happen that let's say in three months there is new studies which say that that a longer wavelength light is extremely healthy for whatever and then you you want to have it right so
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_05: Absolutely.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_05: And that's why we really don't want to just jump on any bandwagon of the new trend of whichever frequencies is the hype right now, for which obviously people are developing LEDs.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_05: Because really, if you zoom out a little bit, it's very clear that physiology is so much more complex.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_05: And this is not a one-dimensional question of stress versus recovery, but there are so many other processes going on.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_05: So daylight is really the most optimal, which is tuned optimally and if we filter out anything that can be a trade-off for practical reasons like not heating up too much or being afraid of UV but otherwise the completeness of daylight is in there so you can use whichever part of it you want
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_04: and I can change that all the time like how do I change that how can I make it transmit long wavelengths
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_05: sorry yeah that was the other part of the question so basically for the solar light collector installation that is more of a one time decision so you cannot just change it on the fly hour by hour but through the display you can and that's where the customization of the LCD part comes into play where you can really eventually obviously for our current prototyping and first product it's a more basic version which just uses daylight but eventually it's not a huge deal to then also be able to tailor the spectrum for individual profiles, individual health needs, and even to incorporate existing therapeutic protocols for which you now have to, let's say, close the eyes and do nothing else through the display while you are just doing your regular work.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_05: So absolutely such tuning is also possible then further down the line through the LCD.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_05: Really cool.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_01: So where are you at in terms of product development?
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so we have, I guess what they, you know, what people in the industry would call an MVP, a prototype that is, it's feature complete.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_03: We are ready to now move to manufacturing.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_03: So we've been in communication with a handful of different, essentially outside manufacturers, manufacturing partners who, who focused and and specialize in taking prototypes and then designing for manufacturability.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_03: So our intention is to, as quickly as we can, move to an initial pilot run, definitely get those first units into the hands of end users who will give us good feedback and make sure that we're optimizing it for the best use case.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_03: And then we'll scale as quickly as we can.
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_01: And you're working with some solar
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_03: array partners as well.
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_03: So you don't offer the solar arrays yourself, do you?
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_03: or support that they need to give them sort of a whole solution.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_03: So everything from the solar collector to, you know, the displays that we offer.
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_01: Fantastic.
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_01: And Peter, you kind of did allude to the usefulness of a tool like ShadowMap in terms of being able to provide the optimal placement of these solar arrays.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I guess, you know, it doesn't matter where you are in the shadows falling on these arrays from other buildings or trees or anything like that.
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_01: But I guess in the Northern Hemisphere, you're looking at kind of optimizing the sort of sun opportunity as well, aren't you?
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_05: I'm sorry, I couldn't catch the last part.
• 43:59
  SPEAKER_01: I said and the Southern Hemisphere as well.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_05: Yes, and so also tying this back to the previous question about this, obviously the size of the installation needs to be determined based on how much sunlight will be available at a given location.
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_05: So for all of these, obviously the calculations and visualizations that you offer can be very valuable.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_01: Fantastic.
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_01: Fantastic.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_01: Well, listen, it's been really interesting.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, as Georg says, I love that idea of a kind of healing screen because, you know, I always come back to my son who spends all his life in his bedroom gaming and, you know, he is coming out a bit more now.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_01: So he hates me using him in such a way.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_01: But, you know, the thought of I've managed to get an incandescent bulb into his room.
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_01: So we've got a tiny bit of him.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_01: for Ed going in.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_04: Is he aware of this or not?
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_01: I went into his room yesterday and I said, well, why have you got that LED light on?
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_01: You're supposed to have the incandescent one on.
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_01: But the thought that, you know, as a parent, I could be able to provide him with a device or a monitor or a display that actually gives him, you know, many of the health benefits of full-spectrum sunlight, I think is amazing.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I mean, I think Peter and I both are really passionate because of our own health journeys, but also just through the process of having gone through that, I think we now really see just how fundamental this solution could be to help people in so many different ways.
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_03: So children in, you know, education spaces, night shift workers in hospitals, you know, people in office buildings, people who are, you know, living in bunkers, who knows, you know, it can...
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_04: Bunker billionaires.
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_03: Bunker billionaires, that's right.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_04: I also have to quickly drop in.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, night shift workers in hospitals, there's no sunlight
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, right.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_03: And, yes, there's no sunlight, and the screen light that they are exposed to is so...
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_03: Disconnected from the circadian.
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_03: much more broad spectrum so that it includes some of these longer wavelengths that are not necessarily in the visible part of the spectrum.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_04: Okay, but I think that's essential information to our listeners because like people might wonder what do we have meant but if you have like a broader spectrum LED backup basically that's also crucial because also like think about you're working and suddenly a big cloud comes up and you have an important meeting or something you just don't want to just interrupt your whole work schedule because of a big cloud so it's good that people know that you also took care of that
• 47:48
  SPEAKER_03: exactly exactly so so yeah so the intention is that this monitor will be entirely usable whether it's daytime or nighttime and that whether it's daytime or nighttime that it will be supportive of your physiology supportive of your health and optimized to support your body's ability to just deal with the tech that we're exposed to, to ensure that we're able to work without compromising our health.
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_03: That's really the goal.
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_01: Fantastic.
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_01: Well, listen, thank you so much for joining us.
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's really fascinating to hear.
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_01: I think Gerg and I are both huge fans of the kind of journey you've been on and the product itself.
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_01: And we really look forward to seeing how it develops over the next few weeks, months and years.
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_01: So good luck with your MVP journey now and getting that into production.
• 48:56
  SPEAKER_03: Absolutely.
• 48:56
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you so much, Dave and Gerg.
• 48:59
  SPEAKER_03: It's been a pleasure.
• 48:59
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 49:00
  SPEAKER_01: And we're definitely putting our hands up to be people to try out.
• 49:05
  SPEAKER_01: I've been checking out on my roof where I can stick a solar array and I've got a perfect place.
• 49:11
  SPEAKER_03: Perfect.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_03: Love it.
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_01: Fantastic.
• 49:15
  SPEAKER_01: Well, thank you for joining us.
• 49:17
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you so much,
• 49:17
  SPEAKER_05: Dave and Gail.
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_05: Thank you.