Soraa doesn't generally make lighting solutions for us plebeians. Its lightbulbs grace the likes of the Palace of Versaille, not the One Bedroom of Terrence. But the company is ready to dabble in the consumer market with Helia. These smart bulbs jump not just on the bandwagon of IoT, but also embrace the growing hostility towards blue light.
See, all of this time staring at screens has taught us that blue wavelengths of light are not very good for our sleep patterns. And now slowly, but surely app makers and device builders are starting to add features that filter out blue light at night to help preserve your circadian rhythms. But, now we're often surrounded LED lights in our kitchens and bedrooms, which also have an annoying tendency to pump out lots of blue light. Helia tackles this by pairing a high-tech lamp with an advanced filter. Pair the bulbs with the app via Bluetooth, it pinpoints your locations and syncs your bulbs with sunrise and sunset. As the day wears on, Helia slowly filters out more and more of the blue wavelengths until none are left.
It's a pretty neat trick, but Helia actually has a few more up its sleeve. See, the bulbs all communicate over your powerlines, creating room-based groups. If you tack on the Presence Smart SNAPs, you can get all the lights in your kitchen to turn on in the morning as you enter the room. Pick up the Cloud Connect and you can control the lights via Alexa and IFTTT.
Obviously the floor at CES is not the best place to get a lighting demo, but the difference between the Helia bulbs (on the left in the top photo) and the generic competition LED ones they brought with them was readily apparent. While Soraa filters out all of the blue light, it's still able to maintain a more natural and neutral seeming hue by carefully controlling the rest of the light spectrum.
All of this doesn't come cheap however. When they finally go on sale in spring of 2017, the bulbs alone will cost $50 apiece. The Presence Smart SNAPs will set you back $30 and the Cloud Connect another $50.
Click here to catch up on the latest news from CES 2017.