Wednesday, August 17, 2016

Saffron Drift Tv

If you read my post on sleep you'll know how important it is to block out blue light in the evenings to fall asleep quickly.  Essentially exposure to blue light in the evenings will block the bodies natural release of melatonin and upset your circadian rhythm.  I counter act this by wearing these ridiculous looking blue light blocking safety specs putting them on around 8-9 pm.  They are only $9.


In fact I looked so stupid my wife suggested I get something a little cooler looking.  So I forked over $90 for these.  


She is much happier with how I look and since I wear them almost nightly its probably a fair investment.

However as I mentioned in my post on sleep you can buy a device that blocks blue light on your TV.  I personally still wear my specs as there are other sources of blue light but my wife likes to watch TV in bed and also has trouble sleeping at times.  So I got this device specifically for the TV in our bedroom to hopefully help her fall asleep with the TV on.  Its called the Saffron Drift TV.  It costs $100 and does not work with 4K and up TV's.  






Its about the size of a thick Iphone 6.  You plug your HDMI into the device and then use the supplied HDMI cable to run to your TV.  If you have multiple devices running to your TV you could use an HDMI switcher to run everything through the Drift Box.



You can set the device with a schedule of your sleep and wake times and the amount of blue light you want blocked and it will gradually adjust the screen depending on the time of the day.  You can also have it just ignore the schedule and block blue light always.  They recommend a target setting of anything under 3500K to help sleep.  I started mine at 3000K to see how the wife liked it.  I must say I was pleasantly surprised with how the picture looked.  Based on my experiences with wearing blue light blocking glasses I was expecting a really orange looking screen but it is much more subtle than that and honestly aside from a slight orange hue you really don't notice the difference that much at all.  Overall I'm really impressed with the picture.  Anecdotal evidence from the wife suggests she is sleeping better but the jury is still out.  It certainly can't hurt for those people that insist they need a TV on to sleep.