Today, IR remote control is by far the cheapest option for consumer electronics. I've long had the idea that Forth is ideal for interactive scripting of IR remote-controlled devices, and I used the light bulb at my desk to learn how to do it with STM8 eForth.

PulseView and an IR receiver (a rather dated SHARP GP1UD272XK) revealed that the protocol is a "NEC" variant:After some learning, thinking and coding, entering "7 ir<enter>" is all it takes for switching this $2 miracle on. The solution is quite generic and controlling other devices shouldn't be difficult.

I made a write-up of what I learned, including surprisingly simple working code in this GitHub Gist.