I have a garage door that will not close on sunny days.
Same sort of problem. The obstruction sensor at the bottom of the door is confused by the strong sunlight and the door stops closing part way and re-opens.
I've tried a toilet-paper tube around the sensor but that isn't always successful. I really wish there was a laser sensor to replace it with.
The garage door obstruction sensors are located inside the garage, so it technically might be an indoor product.
Although, the possibility of a garage being oriented such that the sunlight would directly hit the sensors while the garage door is open seems like it could be a not infrequent occurrence.
Is it a Genie system? My old Genie system had that exact same problem. Even making large sun shields out of Amazon boxes didn't fix it.
I had to replace my opener and door anyway and had a conversation with a tech about it. We decided on a LiftMaster in part because their sensors are very good at dealing with sunlight.
I have this exact problem and (mostly) fixed it by swapping the sensor and transmitter. I just cut the wires and spliced with electrical tape. Now the problem still happens but only sometimes in the fall and spring when the sun's angle is just right. This is with a west facing garage about 41°N latitude USA.
But yeah, why this isn't laser based, or using a light frequency that is less affected by sunlight? Probably cost, or ignorance.
It varies by brand- some brands are better at filtering out sunlight than others. The home builder should know not to use certain brands in garages that face the sun... but they often don't.
It'a not laser based so the sensors don't have to be perfectly aligned. Keeps your garage door working when you kid knocks it with their foot.
I had a VCR back in the day that refused to function if you opened its case. It turned out that instead of using physical switches inside it used pairs of lights and detectors that would give false positive results when ambient light shined on them.
No, there's not any call for high voltages in a VCR, outside the feedback loop of a SMPS if it's fancy. The most common thing to use light sensors is just detecting the difference between tape and clear leader at the ends of the tape (or broken tape).
There's an infrared beam and sensor. When the ice tray is full, it is supposed to block the beam, and then the machine stops making ice.
On a sunny day, there's enough bright light in our kitchen to fool the sensor so it keeps making ice.
We have a random magazine that we put on top of it to make it work correctly.