Reading the Statement of LEDs from Blackbox Hardware?

Hi there,

I am wondering what setup might solve my problem:

I have a “Black Box” alarm System - meaning: I do not have access into it to do something on the HW side. But the box indicates it’s state through three LEDs built into the cover. I would like to include the status into my HA setup, but I do not know how.

Is there a camera setup with ESP32 I could use - similar to ai-on-the-edge for water meters?
Or something with Foto cells?
Or…?

Any held is highly appreciated!

Thanks in advance and have a nice evening!

Maybe a ldr on each led?

As @nickrout mentioned, a Light Dependent Resistor over the LED is exactly what I used on my washing machine to get a running (and more importantly done) state. The only downside, is it looks pretty janky, but in my case the LED was part of the control module and I didn’t want a hand slip while soldering on some wires to turn into an expensive replacement.

Ok, that might be an idea. As I am not really deep into hardware development - are there any reference projects? Where is a good starting point to get ideas for a design?

For a simple way to connect things that provides calibration you could use some of these modules. That way you can adjust it to suit without messing with resistors if hardware isn’t your strong suite.

Use the Digital output of these modules to go into the inputs of an ESP.