No Reflector Beam Break Sensor

This is a fantastic way to add a trigger to your show. We have personally used this activate a sequence as visitors walk up a path towards a venue.
You could use it to trigger a GPIO pin on a pi when trick or treaters venture up your driveway or other such events.
Whilst the sensor itself is not IP rated, once setup it can be sealed up with silicon or equally could be placed in an enclosure.

This sensor is a little different  - it does not need a reflector to work, which makes it very easy to setup, but the range is limited to approx 1mtr (you can eek a little more out of it, but you may face stability issues/false triggers/non triggers). The slight cost to this ease of setup comes in the fact that the output on this is effectively a MOSFET, and you will need to ensure that the ground feeding the sensor is sharing the same ground as the GPIO pin being triggered (it cannot carry a load!). We will aim to do an instructional video on this in the not too distant future!