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USB Infrared Toy / USB Infrared Toy v3
http://www.harctoolbox.org/lirc_rpi.html in particular seems to have made great strides as of late to finally build an affordable integrated "transceiver of all trades" (cf. viewtopic.php?t=431#p3702) and high-resolution driver (e.g. mceusb is just 50µs AFAICS, too slow and inaccurate for many remotes) - some of (t)his work might serve as further inspiration.