This should be very feasible. A number of years back I worked on a project where a system had a main processor (some Motorola 32 bit job) and and an I^{<small>2</small>}C bus. We added one peripheral on the bus that implemented the function of a IR Remote Control receiver/decoder. This I^{<small>2</small>}C peripheral even had the ability to queue received IR codes and an interrupt output to signal the main processor. In this case it was done with a 16C54, but it could have clearly been done with one of the small 8052 derivatives available today.

Michael Karas