Introduction

Boogie Bug has kindly supplied me with a selection of products from their new range of PC modification styled accessories.

In case you were wondering who is behind Boogie Bug you will find the large French distribution and Importing company that is Bacata. They have recently launched a line of accessories aimed towards the PC modification area of the market under the Boogie Bug brand. You can see everything they have to offer under the Tuning and Thermal Solution sections for Boogie Bug.

I have been provided with :

Two Tuluz neon tubes, a blue and an Ultra Violet version.
A Tuluz Disco and a Tuluz Mini Disco, both very cool USB powered neon's.
A Tuluz S neon string kit, a Neon UV CCFL, a UV reactive fan and last but not least, some UV reactive cables.

There are also several other products that Boogie Bug make, all you can see from the link above, but include, Window kits, PSU replacement covers, grills and filters, LCD displays, fan adapters, coloured thumbscrews and a couple of different designs of CCFL fan's.

My first glance at this lot definitely had me impressed, although a little bit worried that neighbors may get freaked out by the glow emanating from my bedroom window!!

Packaging

To save me talking about each product individually I'm just going to sum it all up to begin with. All of the products have the same style plastic packaging. It's nicely coloured, easy to see what's in there and what you're buying (if you brought it from a real store that is, but honestly, when was the last time you did that?). Nothing to complain about, but it is only packaging after all. As for what's included with each item, well, it's nice to see a company include everything that's needed and nothing short of that. All the items have everything you need to fit them, with either Velcro strips or sticky pads cut to perfect sizes.

Ok, let's take the big hitters first, the larger Neon tubes.

TULUZ

The Tuluz neon tube is 30CM long and available in blue, green, purple, red, tri-colour and UV, powered by 12v from a normal molex connector. We have the blue and the Ultra Violet Black on test here. The blue is very bright, in fact extremely, far more than all the others. The UV tube is much less bright, but illuminate the UV reactive fans and cables very well, which is exactly how it should work. Bacata have described the Tuluz as the devil light, I imagine they are referring to the red version and assuming it is just as bright then it would probably be a very accurate description. Overall I'm very impressed with these kits.

The included Velcro strips are very useful. The neon's will almost certainly end up somewhere that will be in the way when you next take out your motherboard, or when you next clean out your case; although for most of us that's only once or twice a decade ;) So the Velcro makes it easier to take out for installation of other hardware, it also holds it steadfast even when mounting at the top or side of a case. The neon tube itself is a fairly sturdy tube, unlike some that you find. The inverter is a very neat little unit with plugs for the power in and power out to the tube. Once you've plugged all the cables in the connectors sit flush to the surface, it looks extremely tidy and professional. The cables look a mess in the picture, but the looseness of the wires as they come gives you more flexibility when it comes to placement in your case. The on/off button was pretty standard but will look nice on many a front panel.

Here's a quick picture to show the neatness of the connectors. You'll also see the two outputs for neon tubes, after speaking with Bacata it seems you will be able to use one inverter to power two neon tubes. These tubes will also be made available on their own at a lower cost. This should help keep the case tidier, and decrease the cost of adding a second tube due to the saving on a new inverter too.

Tuluz Disco and Tuluz Disco Mini

(The pictures don't show respective size here)

The Tuluz Disco (left) is a 25CM USB powered blue neon tube. The Tuluz Disco Mini (right) contains two much smaller 5CM neon tubes on small stands, also USB powered. Other than being USB powered, which make them unique from what I've seen around, they are sound sensitive. In actual fact they can be used in a few different modes.
First off, I think I'll leave it to you to figure out what the OFF mode does. The other two modes are "MO" and "ON". By selecting "MO" you will activate the sound sensitive mode, which will cause the neon tubes to light up as noise is made. The "ON" mode simply turns them on fully. There is also a little sensitivity control that you can use to slightly turn up or down the level of noise the tubes react to.

Unfortunately I found it didn't affect the sensitivity enough. They did light up a bit from typing on the keyboard and definitely when music was on. But it would be nice if the most sensitive level did make them light up at the smallest of noises. A very minor thing that I'm sure would eventually drive me nuts anyway. Both models have the same control unit, which looks nice and is well constructed.

The quality of the units and the very reasonable lengths of cable supplied, added to the nice packaging and the nice idea make this a top notch product.
For a while I dangled the two small tubes over either edge of my TFT screen to see them react to me typing, it was very cool but did get irritating quickly.
I'm still unable to explain why it is that blue light appears to be cool to us hardware enthusiast's, oh well; I guess there's some strange human behavioral reason behind this.
It did also occur to me that being able to keep the power/control unit outside of a case, while being able to mount them inside a case could be very beneficial. I don't think it will be long before we see someone mod their XPC Shuttle with a couple of window panels and one of these lighting up each side. It might be nice to see the same small neon's be available with Molex connectors at some point.

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Introduction Continued