Drive an LED direct from a PIC IO pin (ie no current limiting resistor)

[HankMcSpank]

I would suggest to use a Mosfet with a decent small Rds, this way you could/should loose less voltage across than a regular BJT.

Add a small value resistor between the MOSFET source and GND, put a cap on it, feed it to the ADC and voila you monitor the current.

Tons of way to do it.

All good stuff there....have you any example of suitable mosfets you've used in the past? (just to give me a general vibe of the spec - I'm ideally looking for something in a SOT23 package)

Edit: Hmm: I'm thinking here that I'm only going to be switching 3.3V across the leds - do mosfets work ok that low (all the ones I'm seeing on digikey are typically 20V VDS or more ...ok so that's a max figure, but never having used modfets, are they ok with switching 3.3V well)