Uses a laser beam to maintain a focused visible light spot on the object or feature to be sensed. It is easily aligned, easily setup, and designed for repeatability of performance from sensor to sensor. The intuitive graphic OLED display provides all necessary information and visual confirmation of sensing stability giving the user confidence as to the long-term performance of the sensor. The consistently small laser beam is used to detect such things as a tab on a battery, a misaligned or missing bottle cap, or a cross-threaded can lid. It is useful not only in general purpose applications such as a product detector for vision systems, and simple inspection applications but also for high precision applications for small parts detection, critical identifying feature inspection, and detection of micro electronic packages.