While tidying up I've found a few Irman infrared to serial dongles
https://web.archive.org/web/20060314052558/http://www.evation.com/irman/ind…
they connect via a 9 pin serial plug and then convert any consumer
remote IR signals they receive into serial.
No additional power required, good wide angle reception, open source
driver still available
https://sourceforge.net/projects/libirman/
Could make an interesting project for anyone who wants to control
their VAX / S-100 / homebrew retro board with a serial port via a
remote :)
The company making them went away about a decade ago, so I'm counting
that as in retro territory.
I have four for the price of shipping if anyone is interested, based
in London/UK.
(Around 2000 we had an office music system based around a DNARD/Shark
running mserv & irman where everyone had a random remote at their desk
and could use it to rate/skip/queue something they liked, and the
system generally trid to pick from music which most of the people
currently connected liked... ahh, fun days :)
David