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My recent version: I was playing a pinball game in an arcade. One particular ramp shot was registering earlier in the day and then stopped working. Eventually
by vikingerik 3y ago
My recent version: I was playing a pinball game in an arcade. One particular ramp shot was registering earlier in the day and then stopped working.
Eventually I realized that the sensor is an optical beam, and the receiver happened to be in direct sunlight coming in through a window! So it was continuously receiving infrared and would never report the beam being blocked by a pinball. Sure enough, it started working again once the sun angle changed by a few more degrees.
- lupusreal 3y agoYou missed an opportunity to cheat the machine by waving your hand between it and the sun. ;)
- vikingerik 3y agoHeh, but not exactly. If I blocked the sun, the receiver still would have been picking up the real beam. I would have had to block the sun _and_ make the shot with a pinball at the same instant... which is just playing the game normally with extra steps.
- yencabulator 3y agoI have an optical smoke detector that will give (very loud) false alarms if a sun beam can bounce off a windowsill onto it. It works great if the curtain is closed. Debugging that took a few early sunrises.