Canon wireless flash system working with manual flashes

So I've been playing with this idea for awhile, modifying cheap manual flashes to work with Canon wireless flashes.

The main idea is to control the power output of flashes like Yongnuo either from in camera menu on capable bodies like 7D and 60D or master capable flashes like 580EX. This is limited to wireless manual mode only.

Now, I'm not a professional photographer and I don't have experience shooting in studio. For you guys that work with manual flashes all the time, do you think this is useful? What do you guys think?

It would potentially be useful, but I am having a hard time figuring how you are going to get the camera firmware to communicate with a physical button on the back of a YN560 to change power.

Were it easy or cheap to do, the 3rd party manufactures of those flashes would do it, to improve there sales.

I've been playing with it already. The canon wireless protocol is pretty straight forward. I figured out how to read it and extract channel information, group settings and power levels for each group.

As for the flash, I don't know what chip they use so my idea was to make a piggy back system to control it. In the end, you'll have a cheap manual flash that can respond to Canon IR commands in manual mode. That's the idea anyways.

Good luck!