I’ve been looking at this break beam sensor - and I was wondering what this would output when the beam is broken, and what the most common output is for IR Break Beam sensors.
I’m doing this for a school project where I count the number of people coming through each of the main building’s doorways.
I’m also trying to link this to a Makey Makey, since I haven’t had much experience with Arduinos. Since Makey Makeys are more touch-based, I am also trying to create a contraption that will take the output from the IR Break Beam and run a code which adds 1 to a variable.
Thanks!
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Hello Ty,
Welcome to the forum 
I’ve grabbed one of the break beam sensors off the shelf and connected it on the bench so you can see how it works in the photo below.
The Black and brown wires are connected to ground (0V reference point) and the red wires are connected to the positive of my power supply which can be either 3.3V or 5V (5V gives a bit longer range).
The voltage on the white wire of the sensor will match whatever the power supply voltage is set to (3.3 or 5V) so long as the receiver and transmitter can see each other. If I placed my hand between the two and “break the beam” the voltage on the white wire drops down to nearly 0 volts.
Makey Makeys work by detecting a very slight flow of electricity between two wires and outputting a keypress if they sense a slight amount of electricity.
You won’t be able to hookup the breakbeam sensors detection wire directly to the makey makey otherwise it would be outputting a key press everytime somebody WAS NOT walking through the door.
Perhaps you could use something like a micro:bit instead which is a fairly easy microcontroller to learn?
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