X10 Community Forum
🔌General Home Automation => Automating Your House => Topic started by: bkenobi on May 21, 2013, 11:34:35 AM
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My wife has an office with a door that she doesn't shut. Her desk doesn't face the door. She keeps a candy dish on her desk and at least a couple times a day, she gets spooked by a sudden "Hello!" from a coworker munching on candy. While I think that's hilarious, apparently she thinks it's getting old. I know there's got to be a cheap entry chime that she could put by the door that would basically consist of a light bar (reflective rather than motion probably) that would provide a simple chime when tripped. I'm not looking for X10 since the office would be an issue for PLC. Anyone have a suggestion?
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Google "Photo Beam Alarm" or Photo Beam Sensor. There is a bunch.
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Those search terms help. The ones that pop up seem to be in the $80-300 range where I was thinking $10-20. I found a motion sensor on ebay for ~$6 shipped that I was thinking could be modified to add a shield on the edges of the sensor to "blind" it's peripheral sight and make it only see a beam. If she puts that on the floor by the door and aims it across the opening, it should work reasonably well...maybe. I'll check a bit more on light beam sensors though in case a budget option is available.
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