I did buy a super expensive dimmable tunable led strip from Yuji LEDs. It was expensive even before the tariff situation, so really bad now probably. But the LED was top notch. I followed a guide someone had posted to reddit to make a SAD lamp, and used ESP Home to make it so it made a sunrise effect starting all the way as far yellow as it went and ending at the brightest point. It is just a strip with 2 different temperature LEDs on it and it combines them with directions from ESPHome (oh I had to get a controller for the ESPHome connection. It’s just a “dumb” strip that you have to control the voltage to change).

Since programming it was rough for me, I had some fun experiences where it would just randomly go from super dim to full bright while I was sleeping and hoping for a gentle wake up from a nap. My half asleep brain really thought someone had opened the curtain to the sunny outside. I started thinking of my project as “sunlight in a can”.

Anyways I happily shipped that expensive project off to my brother who suffers from SAD and he never used it even once.