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Antec iLuminate Light Kit |
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Written by Mikhail Ivanenkov
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Sunday, 01 July 2007 |
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Page 1 of 2
Thanks to Antec for the product sample.
Lighting is without a doubt the cheapest, easiest and most effective way of quickly transforming a bland computer into a work of art. The most common solution is the cold cathode: it's bright, cheap and long lasting, but it's also boring. After you have a couple tubes for general lighting, what's next? Reactive lighting. Antec has always been an innovator; after all they released the first LED fan with the lights mounted in the case rather than the motor or externally, something that caught on like a plague. Their latest addition, the iLuminate light kit, is a bit of an innovation itself.
The unit came blister packed with an advertisement insert with features/specs on the flipside. There are two versions of this product: blue and UV (I received the former). It uses LEDs instead of a cathode tube; they're brighter (based on area), longer lasting and give off less heat (meaning they're more efficient in terms of power-to-light conversion). They're also not nearly as fragile as CCFLs. It's not just a tube though; you also get a "hockey puck" controller and a mess of wires. The light is rated for 50,000 hours of operation (close to 6 years of continuous use) and uses a mere 2.4watts of energy.
The kit includes a basic instruction sheet, a 6.5" tube with 6 high intensity LEDs (looking straight at them becomes painful after a while), the puck controller, a PCI slot with connectors and a switch, a screw and double sided adhesive strips for installation, another wire, and a final wire with a pass-through molex connector. The tube itself is very well designed and it's a shame that it's only meant to be mounted internally. Of course there's nothing preventing you from placing it outside the case (such as on top of a monitor or anywhere as long as the LEDs don't shine in your face and aren't too distracting), but this would require an extra hole somewhere for the wire to pass through.
This "puck" is responsible for everything that makes iLuminate unique. Some cold cathode kits have motion sensors to match them to the beat of music or the sound of games, but these generally look awful and aren't very practical. Antec took a different approach. This cylinder is meant to be placed externally, directly next to a sound source (such as a speaker or a sub) for the best effect. It connects to the PCI slot using a PS/2 style plug. This slot has three settings. "Light on" means the tube is constantly glowing, whether the controller is plugged in or not; "off" is the master switch for the whole thing; "control on" hands things over to the puck.
The puck is basically a cylinder with a switch on the side and an adjustable knob up top. The switch has four settings: "off/on" are self-explanatory; "fla" makes the light constantly flash about twice per second; "mo" activates the motion (sound) sensor. The blue portion acts as a knob and adjusts the sensitivity of the unit. High sensitivity makes the lights flash very bright and a lot more often while the lowest sensitivity setting requires much louder sounds while not flashing as often or as bright. I found this feature to work incredibly well when the puck is placed right in front of a speaker.
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Last Updated ( Friday, 20 July 2007 )
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