I've seen the lirc homepage about building an IR receiver. Is there info on building a transmitter as well?

And I'd be willing to take a shortcut if there were anyone out there that is better at all this and had either to sell all ready to go...

The transmitter is just an IR led in series with a resistor (and perhaps another diode). You can get more fancy if you need more power, but if you cable the blaster so that it is right at the receiver of the equipment you are trying to control, you shouldn't need to.

I have build a couple of them (and a couple or receivers). I just realised by looking at this again that I left out the diode in my last transmitter, but it still works fine.

I link that shows the transmitter:
http://lirc.org/transmitters.html

I bought a bunch of these from the guy at this web site. They work well, are well made and are nice and compact (compared with the first one a friend made me):

http://www.irblaster.info/

Well, since the LED is a diode, I don't really see the need for the additional one?

(Also, the RS-232 specification says that ports shall be short curcuit proof, so there is really no need to "be careful".)

Depends on the reverse breakdown voltage of the LED. It is likely to be different than a signal diode, although with the resistor in the line, it shouldn't matter anyway.

I just bought and installed a device called MyBlaster. It was about $45 plus shipping. I use it to change the channel on my Comast cable box so I can record digital channels to my mythbox.

MyBlaster uses one file called MyBlaster.pl that you have to edit with a text editor to use with your device. It has a script that you can run to search for the device code for your cable box, vcr, tv or whatever you are trying to control. I had to use it for my motorola cable box that apparently uses the same code as a Jerrold box (go figure).

No configuring of Lirc is needed. You just tell Mythtv to use the MyBlaster.pl file you edited and mythtv does the rest.

More info at http://www.mytvstore.com/product_id_004.html

_________________
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Amd 2000 + cpu Atheros chipset wireless NIC
GF4 ti4200 Video onboard ALSA sound card
768 meg sdram partial install on Nuv2disc
120 g maxtor HD
PVR 250 Video Capture card

I bought one as well.
Any info on setting it up to control a Dish 811 receiver?

I've had great luck using this docs:

http://www.mmdsi.com/mythtv/MythTV_DISH ... _LIRC.html

Literally cut and pasting, following along on R5A16 led to a working instance.

Not sure what R5B7 or R5C7 adds.

-Jeff