Close-up video of white finger triggering an optical reflective sensor breakout.
An optical reflective sensor is a composite electronic device with two elements - an IR LED and an IR photo-transistor. The IR LED blasts light, and when something bounces the light back to the photo-transistor, the transistor turns on and the amount of current flowing through it increases. This makes the sensor great at detecting when something is in front of the sensor: when nothing is there the IR light never gets reflected back and the transistor stays off.We have two versions of this sensor that are 'breadboard' friendly, the 

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