If you have ever wanted to make a remote control project, this Universal Remote Control Tester project that uses the Ubicom SX28 Microcontroller could be a good starting point. This chip is now being sold by Parallax.

"This project use the Ubicom SX28 micro controller to made a test of the frequency and the complete wave taken form a IR remote control, could be an TV, Audio, VCR, or any type infrared. It consist of two parts, one is the hardware or the physical tester and the another one is the software.

The output state of the IR sensor will change from one to zero in a TTL level, the circuit will detect only this in the rb.4 SX pin , ( after a power on or reset ) starting at this point the RTCC register in zero, and while the rb.4 pin no change RTCC will increment by one each 16 times clock ( see option register configuration ) therefore 3.2 uSeg for a 50 Mhz clock, ok, while this happened the "veces" variable will increment by one many times as the RTCC produce an interrupt."