Lots of light coming through the second-to-top panel of garage door

Because of some false ‘door opening’ alerts, I was thinking about relocating my Garadget’s laser beam to the less-bright, lower region of my garage door. However, thinking about your recommendation to point the laser toward the garage door’s top panel, I decided that point the laser beam below the top panel would would almost never be a good idea, for these reasons:

  1. When the Garadget device is located on the (bottom of the) door opener, directing the beam toward the top panel of the door usually results in a fairly level beam — thereby, more intense — reflection back from the reflector tape;
  2. A tall enough person walking in the vicinity of a lower-pointing laser beam might inadvertently move his/her head through the laser beam, thus risking retinal damage from looking directly at the laser beam.
  3. A person who accidentally interrupts a lower-pointing laser beam would thereby trigger an erroneous ‘door opening’ alert each time.

So for these primary reasons I wholeheartedly endorse your recommendation to point the laser beam at the center of the top panel. However, I am still left with a challenging problem to resolve: I have a type of garage door in which the panel immediately below the top panel is made up of a row of windows. I think the bright, albeit indirect, midday light passing through those garage door windows is somehow diluting the Garadget’s ability to ‘see’ the reflected laser light, which I believe is why my device gives a number of false ‘door opening’ alerts in the middle of bright, sunny days.

Question: For garage doors like mine, viz., with a row of windows comprising the panel immediately below the top panel, Could I resolve those false ‘door opening’ alerts simply by reducing the amount of light that passes through the window(s) nearest my laser target?

Thanks for your thoughts on the issue. The reflective tag has high reflective with the angles of up to 30 degrees so the point 1 in extreme cases, there is no danger of retinal damage because of the very short time of exposure and low power of the laser. I would agree that it’s not a pleasant experience though. The scenario described in your third point is very realistic and enough reason to not point Garadget’s laser to far down.

As the potential solution please consider placing the reflective tag on the wall right above the edge of the door so the tag is blocked by the door the moment it starts to open. Additionally you can shield the sensor from the ambient light. The not-so-elegant, but effective solution is good old tube from the paper towel placed on the controller.