On 25/08/2012 21:22, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Bob Minchin wrote:


Find a miniature mains transformer - secondary voltage irrelevant.
Wind a turn or so of insulated wire through the odd gaps in the core
and use this as a current transformer with a neon across the 240v
winding.
You might have to play with the number of turns but the neon will
strike when the lighting circuit draws current.


I'll tip my hat to a solution that I
(a) hadn't thought of and
(b) seems an entirely simple and elegant way of doing it!

+1 !

--
For every complex problem, there is a solution which is simple, neat,
and wrong.
H L Menken