tinkerer

Apologies if this is the wrong forum or wrong area to be asking. I am also quite a novice in respect of electronics. I have a settop box placed in a cupboard and need to extend two front panel LED's about 10cm. The LED's are power (red) and wireless strength (green). The red is either on or off whereas the green flashes once, twice or up to 4 times a second depending on signal strength. For warranty issues I dont want to open the unit and extend the cable on the LED's. In researching I came across the idea of using a photodiaode taped over the original LED connected via a small battery to a LED replicating the status of the original lights. I went ot a series of retail electronics stores all of whom failed to understand what I wanted and were no help except to point me to this forum to see if anyone could guide me on what I need to do. It would also be great if the whole thing could run off a "lifetime" watch type battery. Again, apologies of this is thw wrong forum for such help. Joe