I was having trouble closing my garage door. It would go down just a little bit and go up again. This only happened in the aftrenoons. Called a garage door service and I was told the sensors (electric eye) were out of alignment. They corrected it. After a few days the trouble started again. My son thought this was due to the aftrenoon sun shine. I enclosed both the sensors (put a card board tube around the sensors). Surprisingly, the door started working. I am still not sure why this worked. As far as I can gather, the sunshine could not block the path of sensors. Any explanation would be appreciated. Thanks.
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The light that is coming out of the emitter side of those two sensors (one is an emitter and the other is a receiver) is most likely "modulated". That means that it is flashing at a certain rate.
The receiver is "tuned" to sense light coming in at that modulation.
The sun contains almost every wavelength of IR, visible, and UV light and the intensity can be so great as to make even the most "robust" photoelectric think that it is seeing its emitter's light - or be so powerfull that the receiver can no longer see the emitter, therby thinking that it is blocked.
In the case of the behavior you are reporting (acting like the beam is being blocked) - is probably due to "sun overload".
The tubes helped to cut down on the sun overloading the receiver.
There could be other reasons for this, too (heat, age, etc.) but this is the most likely. The tubes are acting like apertures and helping to block out the overloading sunlight.
Thanks for a logical explanation. Now I see the light!
The first time I saw this problem, the answer eluded me for an hour until I happened to stand so my shadow blocked the sunlight on the sensor. You may be able to swap sides with the transmitter and receiver so the receiver doesn't get direct sunlight.