After some searching, I ended up using a microcontroller and a piece of code borrowed from the web that I tweaked and adapted. The microcontroller-based concept was chosen because I wanted to scale ...

It’s an interesting take on a 3D scanner. He used a stepper motor to rotate the object being scanned, and an Arduino for control, but the real novelty is the way he used the sensor.

As indicated, our system requires a “Logic High (H)” level input to wake up. The best sensor you can use to detect an intrusion is the Passive Infrared (PIR) Sensor. The PIR Sensor detects the motion ...

The idea is pretty neat, so [Ivan] decided to implement it for mains devices by making this proximity switched outlet box. A Sharp GP2D12 infrared distance sensor is the key to the system.