Enjoy the aurora borealis in the comfort of your own home

The aurora borealis is one of nature’s incredible spectacles, but very few people get the chance to witness them in person.  So how can you enjoy a similar spectacle at a fraction of the price?

The Encalife aurora borealis projector allows you to enjoy a beautiful aurora borealis effect rather than the more common nebula patter often used.

It has a lot of interesting features that sets it apart from the wide range of space projectors on the market.

What is the aurora borealis?

The Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights) is a natural phenomenon caused by charged particles in the Earth’s atmosphere interacting with gases in the upper atmosphere. This interaction causes light emissions from the ionosphere.

These light emissions are stunning to look at, but due to the conditions required are unpredictable and hard to plan for.

The best time to view the Aurora Borealis is in the winter months between December and March. During this period, the northern lights are at their brightest and longest lasting.

Aurora Borealis Projector 

If you don’t want to wait until the winter months and don’t wish to travel to the ideal viewing site then one option is to enjoy a projected version in the comfort of your own home.

This is the first time I’ve seen such a projection. Most products available are nebula and star projectors, which look very different.

In the box you get the projector, a remote control and a USB-C power cable.  The remote is optional as this device can be controlled via an app on your phone, and there are also some controls on the projector.

It weighs just 800g and is designed to allow you to point it up at the ceiling or horizontally at a wall.

App Controlled

This projector doesn’t have its own dedicated app, instead it uses the free Smart Life app, which can be used to control a wide range of home smart tech.

While you’ve got three ways to control the projector (via the app, the included remote, or buttons on the device), I suspect most people will use the app out of convenience.  Having these different options is a big plus if you plan on putting this in the kids room, they don’t need a mobile to control it, and you can remotely check if they’ve switched it off.

The app requires an account; you’ll need to create one if you don’t already have one.  Having an account means you’ll see all your compatible devices in the same place, allowing you to control smart bulbs, projectors and even robot vacuum cleaners!

The app talks to the projector via the 2.4GHz Wi-Fi frequency and setup was very simple, just open the app, click add device and the projector was automatically detected.

Once added to your account, you can select one of 10 preset scenes, change light colour, adjust the motor speed (how fast the projection moves), control the in-built speaker and turn on/off different elements of the projection.

The inbuilt speaker allows you to play sound from any app on your mobile, be it music from Spotify or your favourite podcast.

The sound quality is OK, it lacks bass when listening to music but works well if you want to listen to podcasts.  If you were popping this in a kids room, this would be a nice additional feature that means you don’t need to have a separate speaker taking up space.

If you fancy leaving this on to fall asleep to there is a simple countdown feature, letting you choose between one minute to 24-hours. 

If you want a more complicated setup, where it turns on or off at certain times on certain days, you can do this via the scheduling feature.

Final Thoughts

I’ve never come across a Northern Lights Aurora Projector; it offers something genuinely different from the competition.

With controls over the colour, levels of brightness, movement speed, moon and star visibility you’re sure to be able to use this to create different types of atmosphere.

If you like the look of this, check it out via the Encalife website.