Im not sure what you mean by "waste." I didnt buy more
tanks just to see what IR protocol they use, I bought them
because I got hooked on playing with them. (I now have
a tiger, a panther, and a t34, and like the tiger the most).
In anycase, the main goal is to add some smarts to these
tanks by putting a microcontroller on them and see if I
can have it do robot like stuff, like navigate etc. The easiest
way to do this is to have it emulate the IR signals being sent
from the controller.
That IMHO is not a waste
BTW. I realized that the protocol will probably be a bit different
from the digi-q racer cars, as it will have to encode the
firing button at least. oh well, time to dig out an ir sensor
and a scope.