Optical sensors, oh my

Everytime I think of fixing stuff I always have the Elbow lyrics of “The fix is in” going through my head. That song is all about rigging a horse race which has nothing to do with me finally installing a pair of optical sensors to stop me breaking my garage doors.

This is the clever bit that sends out some sort of optical signal or a ‘frickin laser beam’ or something
This is the equally clever bit that does some sort of crazy reflecting it all over the place in a scattery way.

I thought it was going to be really, really difficult to have the signal reflected back to the transmitter/receiver. As it turns out it was super easy. I think if the reflector had been a mirror then yeah…mega tough – but since it has that weird reflector type layout it turns out that you have to put it in roughly the right area and then you’re golden.