10.2 : 1 compression 360 at sea level. Options?

Kind of a tangent but has anyone ever tried rigging up an OEM-style knock sensor to a simple dash light indicator of some sort? I thought about doing this with my '88 5th Ave because the Lean-Burn system actually had a knock sensor which the computer would use to tell when it could add extra timing advance or take it back out depending on conditions. After wrecking my 360 due to excessive pinging I'd definitely like a way to know for sure when knock is starting because an engine can knock lightly and still not produce an audible noise. I don't know how knock sensors work though, if this is even possible to do?