Quote Originally Posted by The Master View Post
Wouldnt that need a load on the end of the wire? The wire goes from the smoke machine then straight into the circuit
Never tried it...but...if my thinking is right...
A coil of wire around the power cord itself (around, not touching...), a high value resistor in series with the coil, one side of the resistor to ground, one side of the resistor to the PIC pin. The resistor should show a voltage across it if there is current flowing thru the power cord. You'll probably have to put a diode inline with the PIC pin and maybe a small R/C network behind that to filter out the 50hz half-wave and get a decent reading at the PIC.
Unless my thinking is really jacked up (entirely possible), it should work... Not sure how many turns you'd need, might be 10, might be 1K...