Demon: Yes I had thought of that although perhaps I should have been a little less hasty. I probably don't mean background, I realize that I can simply put the mibam routine in the appropriate place (i.e. the waiting for an IR input loop) and take advantage of it's low cpu use. But I suspect that in the end a hardware approach is the best and so BH, I think I will go for those. I would love to see your example. It leaves opportunities for expansion. After all, we are all waiting for our Raspis are we not?