IR Line Following Sensor

These sensors are great for simple robots needing to follow a line, or stay within a boundary.  

Simply mark your track with black masking tape (black absorbs the IR emitted by the sensor, tricking the sensor to think nothing is there).  These sensors also work great for short range obstacle detection, cliff detection, and wall detection.

These sensors use a Vishay TCRT5000 (datasheet), which is a short distance IR proximity sensor that looks for IR light reflecting off objects. 

We supply two variants:

• Single mounting hole board - a small form-factor 3-pin board.  To keep the small form factor, it does not have a potentiometer for sensitivy adjustment.
• Dual mounting hole board - a slightly larger form-factor board, which does have a potentiometer for sensitivy adjustment.  The two mounting holes also ensure better stablility for position critical applications.