By: Colin Billings - CEO + Founder

Summer 2014, Restless Nights

If, like me, you’re one of the unfortunate 164 million Americans who struggle with sleep, you know the terrible ways lack of sleep can affect your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. The summer of 2014 was one of the worst periods for me, sleep-wise; with so much going on in my life and at work, I was barely getting any sleep and struggling through my days as a result.

Fortunately (and, ultimately, fatefully), after trying what seemed like every possible way to get better rest, I stumbled upon Flux, an application that changes the way your screens emit light according to the time of day. All of a sudden, my quality of life improved drastically.

Just a week after installing Flux on my computers, I was sleeping much better and once again feeling productive and happy throughout the day.

I was utterly fascinated and completely hooked. How could something as simple as a change in the type of light I stared at (granted, staring at anything for 10+ hours a day isn’t great for your physical or mental health) make such a significant impact on my happiness and well-being?

Fall 2014, The Science

I started digging and quickly learned that my experience was not only common but backed by science. At that time, almost 15 years had already passed since the scientific community first established a link between light exposure and many aspects of our biological health, in particular, how much and how well we sleep at night. Yet, for more than a decade, as this research mounted, this fact was largely left out of common knowledge.

Luckily, in the past few years, a trove of scientific studies that describe how light affects our bodies’ rhythms has entered popular culture has emerged to all of us, even those not willing to seek it out. Today, what was once a revolutionary discovery, now seem like common sense:

The Earth has orbited around the sun for nearly 3.5 billion years, producing cyclical periods of light and darkness. Cellular organisms on the Earth’s surface (including humans) evolved critical biological functions in response to those cycles.

Essentially, our bodies are hard-wired to respond to day and night cycles and we rely on those cycles to facilitate sleep, an essential biological process. When the cycles are disrupted (like when we leave bright lights on in the evening or shamelessly stare at our phones while lying in bed), we’re sending mixed signals to our bodies’ physiological clocks, throwing them out of whack.

Winter 2014, DIY

With the science in hand, I set out to build "Flux for my apartment" — the place where I exposed myself to the most artificial light. It was the midst of the first generation of “Smart Home” products, so, naively, I was certain I could cobble together some Frankenstein of existing products to create a Flux-like experience in my home.

I bought all of the available smart bulbs, smart switches, and home hubs and tried to string them together. But no matter which way I tried, I couldn’t get them to integrate seamlessly into my apartment or even get close to delivering the experience I was looking for. They were all slow, unreliable, and incompatible, and, most vexingly, they could only be controlled via mobile apps. In the end, frustrated and perplexed, I reverted my apartment back to standard analog dimmers and bulbs.

While my search for a better lighting system had resulted in a giant zero, all of the research and experimentation I had done left me with the seeds of what would soon become Orro. I had discovered that

It’s been more than 60 years since the last major innovation in lighting controls: the dimmer.

Despite, more than 2.6B light switches are sold every year, the industry hasn’t continued to meet our needs as they’ve changed.

There was an opportunity, here, to build something brand new.

Spring–Summer 2015, Work Begins

A small group of us got together and started to ask some hard questions. We wanted to figure out whether it was possible to build a lighting system that delivered natural and responsive lighting only when and where we needed it, but that was as easy to use as a standard light switch. Essentially, we were asking...

Would it one day be possible to never have to think about our lights again?

We knew that this new system would need to be responsive and adaptive to people’s needs. Instead of relying on us forgetful and sometimes lazy humans to program it, tweak it, or flip a virtual switch on an app, it would need to sense presence in a space and function independently to provide light when we need it and not when we don’t. We were also convinced that a lighting system that is truly intelligent shouldn’t immediately become “dumb” again when it can’t connect to WiFi, so our system would need to break from “Smart Home” convention. And importantly, it would need to enable us to keep the lighting in our homes more in line with the natural rhythms of the day by regulating the intensity and timing of our artificial lights.

So we got to work and started turning that vision into reality. Along the way, we were joined by many incredibly talented colleagues, patient and visionary investors including Menlo Ventures, Amazon's Alexa Fund, AME Cloud Ventures, Morado among others and gracious beta participants who have all invested themselves deeply in realizing our first product, the Orro Switch.

Today, Introducing Orro

We’ve built the world’s most advanced responsive and adaptive home lighting system.

The Orro Switch fuses data from an array of sensors (not cameras) into a complete and coherent picture of when, where, and how you use light in your home. From day one, Orro introduces natural lighting rhythms into your home with sunrise and sunset lighting transitions that mirror your morning and nighttime routines, and automatically adjusts their levels over time to help you wake up and fall asleep more naturally. Within a week of using it like you would any other light switch, Orro learns your preferences and seamlessly, automatically adapts lighting levels to your activities. Because it detects and responds to your presence rather than just motion, Orro knows when you are using a space and keeps the lights at your prefered level (even if you’ve been sitting still for hours while binge-watching your favorite show).

Orro was engineered with industrial and automotive electrical components, meaning each switch will last a minimum of ten years. It’s designed to be incredibly easy to use and install—setup only requires 15 minutes and some simple household tools. You can also speak to your Google Assistant or Amazon Alexa to set levels of brightness and trigger actions for your Orro Switch. And since our control system powers a universal dimmer that allows Orro to work with all types of light fixtures and bulbs, there’s no need to replace or retrofit whatever else you have going on in your home, lighting-wise.

Each Orro Switch contains its own microprocessor, like a mini computer. Everything, including all the smart stuff, is built into the device itself; nothing essential is in the cloud so your lights won’t ever go offline. The Orro lighting system can function without relying on the internet and, because we value privacy, all of Orro’s features are opt-in—from what it senses to what data you share. Best of all, while we offer an app with extra capabilities, Orro works without one — you don’t need to use a smartphone for anything other than the initial setup.

I am so proud and excited to be able to share the Orro Switch with the world. Our team has worked hard to build the best and most dependable software and hardware, and we can’t wait to hear about your experience.

All this is to say that the Orro Switch is now available for purchase. Get yours today!