i picked this up again after having some fun with Tvbgone widget.

the lirc project died quite sometime ago (3-4 years?) but it has recently found a new maintainer. there is also a windows port called winlirc (http://winlirc.sourceforge.net/) which was last updated on May 15, 2011 (very recent!)

since i have a windows desktop, i'm going with the winlirc route. the nice thing is, it includes a utility called IRRecord.exe, which is a command line app to record IR codes from your remote.

the catch is, it only supports a limited number of IR receivers. i went ahead and purchased a Microsoft Media Center Edition IR Receiver + Remote kit from ebay.

my plan is to hook up the receiver to my laptop, and then run IRRecord, and to go through the paces with a number of remotes I have at home (for fan, air conditioning, TV, etc) and see if I can coax it to work.

i'm now waiting for the MCE pakcage to arrive. will report here if i have any success with this approach.