Ever wondered what’s the difference between your self-built LED-LDR devices and industrial produced vactrols? Well, here’s the answer: Not a lot! I recently got a few samples from Macron, a Hong Kong based manufacturer of opto-electronics and I was just too curious to not open up one of them. I was especially tempted to know the color of the LEDs that are used. This is the MI65CLD type, LED on one side, LDR on the other side. The gap between them is roughly 1mm although it’s kind of hard to measure the cut open optocoupler…
The LDR I guess is from their own production and seems pretty standard; it’s most probably more a tolerance issue which ones they use and which ones not. The LED is a waterclear red.
