Sanity check with potential project. IoT with a dishwasher So sanity check for a potential project.

We have an old dishwasher at work, a GE QuietPower 3, and being a technology company, we want to connect it to our chat room to notify that the cycle is done, so someone can unload it.

The first iteration of the project we were just going to cover the "finished" indicator light with a photoresistor, so when it lights up, the microcontroller will know it is done. 

However, that is not very nice looking, the second approach, after quickly looking at the technical maintenance manual. Is to literally solder the ground and + of the "finished" indicator light to a digital or analog pin, and the ground pin on the micro controller, so the results are more precise.

I suspect the LED is probably less than 12V, (will confirm with a multimeter). I will step it down to 5V. 

Then it is just a matter of checking if the pin is high or not on the microcontroller, is this simple enough to solve the problem, or am I overlooking something obvious?
If connecting to the wiring, using an opto-coupler will ensure that your Arduino's days will be long on the face of the land. If it is an LED indicator you may be able to connect the opto-coupler LED  input directly across the existing LED, but use of an appropriate series resistor would be wise. Optocoupler LEDs may have about 2 V forward operating voltage which is in the same range as a red LED. Some use lower forwards voltage LEDS (probably IR).  

If your opto coupler has low input current requirements then connecting it via a series resistor across the existing LED will allow the indicator to still operate. 

R series = (Vsource - V_opto_LED) / I_opto.
eg 12V source, 2V opto_LED (typical), 1 mA (should be enough for logiclevel signal.)
R = (12-2) / .001 A = 10/.001 = 10 k Ohm.

For direct connection across an existing red LED a 100 Ohm series resistor should avert disaster.
V drop in resistor at 1 mA:
V = IR = 0.001 x 100 = 0.1 V
= liable to be OK.

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