LIRC hardware receiver options...

[stuart <st...@xn...>]

Have we talked about this lately?

I know there are pre made dongles out there and I assume there are 
published projects that each of us can make.  I'd like to know if there 
is a COTS solution making anything home made not worth while.

To add a twist to the project - an idea we have been kicking around is a 
PIC or Atmel based USB dongle that will serve both as a LIRC receiver 
and a display interface.

There are a lot of LCDs and VFDs which are essentially parallel port 
devices. A LIRC receiver <=> USB interface based around a processor 
could certainly handle an extra parallel port.  We (ok, I) envision the 
presentation of such a device to be very similar to a once sold Bose 
product which controlled a whole stereo system but looked no larger then 
an alarm clock.

Let's take this project one step further into reality.  Say I, or anyone 
for that matter, used one of these batch PCB houses and published the 
design.  (Well, as in software, beware early adopters.)  But think of 
it.  All you would have to do is buy a PCB from the batch house.  If you 
find a problem w/the design - fix it.  But by all means share what you 
find or even submit a newer version of the PCB.

Motivated yet?

Ok, time for some serious questions:

Say it does make sense to build your own IR-receiver <=> USB dongle.

1) As in all things which claim to be interfaces, what are the two 
things we are connecting?  Is it clearly a generic remote and LIRC?  Or 
are there other considerations that most here already take for granted? 
  (i.e. We here only use JP1 remote controls and only USB dongles that 
look like HIDs and ...)  Basically, what does the dongle need to do.

2) I know, this is the LIRC forum.  But there are so many Linux LCD 
efforts this may be the only place to get a (somewhat) unbiased opinion. 
  What are people using?  There's LCD-Linux, LCD4Linux and LCDproc just 
to name 3. Perhaps one is more conducive to an LCD (or VFD) hanging off 
a USB than the others.

3) Does LIRC have any hooks to "output" IR signals?  That is, it 
wouldn't take much to put an IR-Blaster on this dongle.

-thanks