You need to first get pretty proficient in VB. The rest is easy. I am working on a general purpose VB porogram that will go a long way towards simplifying the task, It is a very stripped down version of what runs my home theater. The minimum configuration is a PC a Specific IR receiver (NECIR2PC) and a Nirvis slinke. The slinke is the hard part and I may set up some output drivers for different IR emitting devices. The slinke takes RS232 commqands and puts out IR.