One year ago I wrote a couple of posts about or related to my Arduino board:
- Infrared Remote Library For Arduino & My IR Receiver Program
- Control Keystrokes and Mouse from the Command-Line with Xautomation
I picked it up again from my closet and since I wanted a remote control again. 
Python script
Since I never stored the Python script that reads the data that the Arduino board outputs from its serial port to the computer’s USB port I had to rewrite it:
#!/usr/bin/python3
from serial import Serial
import subprocess
ser = Serial('/dev/ttyUSB0', 9600, timeout=1)
print("connected to: " + ser.portstr)
while True:
# Read a line and convert it from b'xxx\r\n' to xxx
line = ser.readline().decode('utf-8')[:-2]
if line: # If it isn't a blank line
print(line)
if line == '520':
subprocess.call(["xte", "key Up"])
elif line == '620':
subprocess.call(["xte", "key Down"])
elif line == '110':
break
ser.close()
About the script
To install the serial module in Ubuntu for Python 3, run the following line in the terminal:
sudo apt-get install python3-serial
Documentation and installation instructions for other platforms can be found on the module’s site:
The subprocess module and the lines about xte (xautomation) aren’t needed, but read my post Control Keystrokes and Mouse from the Command-Line with Xautomation and you will understand why those lines of code are included. To install Xautomation in Ubuntu, run:
sudo apt-get install xautomation
You can find out which port you should listen to by checking the Arduino IDE’s menu Tools > Serial Port. Or you can check in the /dev folder for something fitting.
Other stuff
How to add a library to Arduino:
If you get an error regarding tying to include WProgram.h if you try to use the infrared remote library, checkout this fix: