I wish id have thought of that. I dont have any photo diodes or anything else to sense light. Those ready lights wernt going to be connected. The idea is that the PC can display all that. It wouldnt be hard to connect them back up though.

I guess if i dont connect it to the PC and just use the origional lights then it wont be a problem. I do have a future project that will use this type of thing though so i wanted to get it right now.

Ive just connected a transistor up to the mains through a 10M resistor and with a diode across it plus a 100K grounding resistor for the base. It seems to be working perfectly. The LED turns on when the mains is turned on. Ive had it running the whole time ive been writing this post and nothing is smoking so it seems this method will probably work. Just incase, i do have a stack of spare PIC16F877As