Photodiode across Z-Wave window sensor pins?

Other Devices & Integrations Lighting & Load Control
1

Question: Can you put a photodiode across the Z-Wave window sensor’s pins to sense light on/off?
Why: I want to monitor a light and when it is lit, send a signal.

Backstory: I have a device that when activated lights a LED but the LED does not stay lit. As such, If I do not see it I cannot know if it was activated. At this point I do not want to wire into the device. I was thinking about two paths:

  1. A stand alone circuit with a bistable or latching output (with reset)
  2. Using the Z-Wave switch as input to Vera so that I can then do as I need with the input (message, turn on light, etc)

Per number 2, I was wondering if it was as simple as wiring a photodiode across the Z-Wave window sensors pins (and putting the photodiode near the LED to be sensed).

I know there are a number of complicated ways of doing this. Simple is the driver for me at this point.

Edit: Maybe the next question is what is the simplest circuit to put across the Z-Wave window sensor’s pins to sense light on/off? Or what other option to accomplish said “why”?

2

Wouldn’t be more simple to use z-wave light sensor for that purpose?
By window sensor you mean the door/window sensor with magnet?
If yes, then you can replace contacting module with photodiode (or wire one to external sensor connector if a device has one)
The only thing you need to think about it’s that this type of sensors have two states (open/close) while photodiode will probably have analog output ranging from 0V to nV. How it will be interpreted by the sensor?

3

If you are going to build something like this then I would suggest using a Z-Uno as the Z-Wave part.
There are different light sensors/sketches that could be used in this experiment.