why does my infrared tv remote secretly use wifi?

[morphy_richards]

After watching a film on rasbmc my wife just went to change channel using the Samsung infrared tv remote and ended up scrolling up and down a rasbmc menu instead.
Which seems a little odd when you consider she appears to have been controlling a raspberry pi hidden behind the telly with nothing other than a WiFi dongle attached to it. Is she a witch? Is this grounds for divorce?

[rurwin]

It's wonderful when technology does that to you. I remember a similar experience with a slot-racing setup that supplied power to a car even when the transformer was disconnected. Magic is real.

Although in this case, there is probably a more mundane explanation. I'm no expert, but I believe I have heard tell of a back-channel on HDMI that passes IR commands back to the signal source.

BTW: never build a slot-racing circuit with only one cross-over.

[rpdom]

I suspect it is the CEC signal from the TV being passed via HDMI to the Pi.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_E ... ontrol#CEC

[morphy_richards]

So It's quite common? Happens to others? Does it happen reliably enough to warrant writing some software to harness it and allow you to control the rpi with the normal tv remote instead of an Android app on a phone?

[Paul Webster]

it is such a good idea that it (CEC) has been included since very early days of XBMC on RPi.

[ghans]

It is common , and i believe this feature of the Pi has been
advertised by XBMC devs before. I can not vouch for reliability
though , the initial problems i heard of might've been solved
by now.

ghans

[morphy_richards]

it is such a good idea that it (CEC) has been included since very early days of XBMC on RPi.

So it has.
http://www.foo.co.za/raspbmc-control-xb ... g-hdmi-cec
Clever stuff, whatever will they think of next!