You can use wifi strictly for communication if you'd like. However this will first drain the battery much faster and second you'll have a longer connection time when the remote first wakes up. For two way like this I always use the ZM-24 zigbee antenna and then only rely on the wifi for things like cover art that the zigbee can't handle. Now the remote works almost instantly on wakeup and zigbee even stays connected for hours of idle time and the wifi will not.

I have soley used wifi on these remoted only when zigbee would not work because of the concrete construction. It worked but I can't say I was very happy with it and do wish I could have done zigbee