Ario today launched a new connected lamp on Kickstarter PBC dubbed the Ario Lamp. The device utilizes 15 years of research at leading institutions including Harvard Medical School, NASA and NIH to wake and energize the body by day, and ready the body for sleep at night through changing light that mimics that sun. The change in light supports sleep, energy and the body’s natural clock.

The Kickstarter campaign aims to raise $50,000 in 45 days.

The lamp weighs 15 lbs and measure at 60” height  x 13” diameter. Inside the lamp is an environmentally-friendly 150-watt, equivalent LED lighting system that elegantly casts light up and down during the day and downward only at night.

Why Ario Lamp?

What makes Ario Lamp different from other connected lamps in the market is that it automatically adjusts both light color and direction to support body health. It utilizes smart technology to learn a person’s sleep schedule, to be able to provide bright, energizing blue-rich light that wakes and carries the body throughout the day, and gradually changes the color to amber light in the evening to help the body relax and produce melatonin to prepare for sleep.

“For thousands of years, humans have lived by the sun’s natural light-dark cycle. With the invention of artificial lights and modern electronics, our bodies no longer have proper cues of light color, intensity, and direction,” said Ario Co-Founder and CEO Brian Hoskins. “We created Ario to provide a simple, well-designed solution to this problem and make it easy for people to improve their health from the time they wake up, until the time they go to sleep.”

Fully automatic

The Ario Lamp seems quite easy to set up and works alongside existing lights. Another feature that sets it apart from other connected bulbs is that it doesn’t require a mobile device to operate. Once it connects to a Wi-Fi network, Ario works automatically and will monitor and personalize lighting. It delivers optimized lighting based on your geo-location, time of day, season, and local weather patterns. Ario is an environmentally-friendly LED that utilizes 80 percent less electricity than traditional bulbs and lasts over 20 years.

Aside from waking you up naturally and prepping your body for sleep at night, by keeping your body clock in sync, it will also help users to manage healthy body weight, reduce stress, increase powerful antioxidants, boost the immune system, and improve overall health.

“After extensively studying infant phototherapy products and attending LightFair for the first time, I saw an opportunity in the then developing LED lighting market to customize lighting for practical interior use and comfort. It seemed strange to me that we’re wired to live according to the rhythms of the sun, but spend most of our lives indoors with lighting that’s pretty much the same throughout the day. When I learned the power light has to influence our health, how strong the science is, and what’s on the market, I knew I had to create a healthier lighting solution,” said Ario Co-Founder and CTO Dale Dell’Ario.

Though the Ario Lamp is able to function all day and night without user control via a smartphone app, the smart light does come with an app. This enables users to remotely control the Ario Lamp when needed, follow and manually update its schedule, and also integrate it with other connected devices.

Bringing the sun inside

Ario isn’t the first company to attempt to bring the sun inside our homes. There’s the Sunn Light, which literally looks like the sun and comes in three sizes. Throughout the day, it continuously changes color to match the rhythm of the sun. You can use it as an alarm, or if you’re going on a trip to a place with a different time zone, you can set it to mimic that time zone so your body clock can adjust even before you reach your destination. At night, with the Sunn Light app installed on your smartphone, just shake your smartphone to activate Moon Glow. The light is bright enough to let you see where you’re going but not too bright to fully wake you up and disrupt your sleep cycle.

Another, though unsuccessful in its crowdfunding campaign, is Silk by Saffron, Inc. Like the above lamps, this bulb automatically adjusts its brightness and temperature throughout the day so you can feel energized in the mornings and be ready to sleep at night. It mimics the position of the sun and conditions your body to feel relaxed and ready for bed at the end of the day.

You can help fund the Ario Lamp here. To kick things off, Ario is also giving away special prizes such as a Nest Learning Thermostat, an Aria Connected Scale and Fitbit Flex. To be eligible to join the giveaway, you must be at least 18 years old and a U.S. resident. If you meet the requirements, you can sing up here.

Photos courtesy Ario Lamp