Some days ago I used my very extensive electrical knowledge and attached an IR diode to my raspberry pi and XBMC/Kodi system. See the photo ;-). I just used the first best tutorial for the software and hardware configuration on the internet: Raspberry Pi als Multimedia-Zentrale (in german). This worked like a breeze.
While your are doing the software configuration, you are creating a lircd.conf especially designed for the remote control (if you don't find a suitable configuration online in the remotes database). It's quite a bit of fun mapping all the remote control keys to key events with the irrecord tool like an old text based console adventure. Yeah, no plug and play. Your own hard work to bring the system up and running.
Since the configuration file created by irrecrod asked very kindly
# Please make this file available to others # by sending it to <lirc ät bartelmus punkt de>
I submitted the file. Here is the commit on sourceforge and in the offical lirc Remotes Database you can find an Bench KH677 with an image now.