Showing off some vintage 1970s LEDs

After seeing this video, I was inspired to hunt down and purchase some early-model LEDs. It turns out you can get Soviet-era gold-plated LEDs from the 1970s on eBay, so I grabbed some of these and made a little thing to show them off.

I did a bit of research to figure out what I had, including browsing scans of 70s Polish datasheets and translating a Polish Wikipedia article to research the now-defunct manufactuer, Unitra CEMI.

The LEDs came from a seller in the Czech Republic and arrived via registered mail (the kind you have to go to your post office to sign for). The actual LEDs are gold plated, and you can see the actual junction clearly inside the lens.

I put two of them into a breadboard with an ATtiny85 programmed in Arduino to do a simple alternating blink pattern. I designed a 3D-printed display to hold it, spliced some USB to power it, and made a little label to explain what the thing was, and now I have a neat little thing to put on the shelf.

 

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