Using the camera and flash as an Infrared Port?

[Amutek]

OK... It's a subject that's been beaten to death ... we know there is not an IR port on the Touch Pro... but... how about an alternative? Is there any way to use the built in camera and flash as IR devices... perhaps by redirecting or creating a device driver/descriptor or a registry hack to configure the camera and flash as an IR port? There are a few applications such as Universal Remotes that rely on IR for functionality. I see no reason why the Flash LED can't be used as a visible IR transmitter... and a rather powerful one at that. I realizie that using the camera to recieve IR would be a lot more tricky, however I have taught technicians in the field to use their phone's camera to be able to "see" if an IR transmitter was working properly. If you take your TV remote and point it at your phone's camera and press a button on the remote, you can see the IR LED on the remote blink, indicating that it's working. The trick is to get the camera to interpret image data as IR... possibly a fixed cell in the center of the camera's viewing window, or a digital ultrazoom so that whatever is in the center of the window is all that is seen and then interpreted as IR data. I would love to hear some feedback on this topic. Anyone up for the challange? (I LOVE this stuff!)