building up very slowly but eventually causing the PIC to register an instantaneous top-button press

Or, in Laura's case, a volume-knob turn. Remeber that any IR command or button press will wake up the player.

Here's an idea. Not a solution to the hardware problem, but a band-aid that might be useful: An option in Hijack (perhaps in config.ini) which says that only a specified set of button presses or events can wake up the player from standby, it ignores all other commands. For instance, tell it that only a top-button press can wake up the player, or only a knob press, or a press of the power button on the Rio remote, etc.

That way, if it's random commands (for whatever reason) causing the wake-ups, you'd eliminate 99 percent of them.

Is that even possible to do?