Many development boards incorporate an infrared receiver, such as Orange PI, Bananapi, Libre computer, Pine64, etc.
This manual explains how to configure the infrared receiver in Linux and shows an example of how to read the infrared codes emitted by a remote control.
Show all input devices:
cat /proc/bus/input/devices
Add all protocols (add this line to the /etc/rc.local to start at boot):
ir-keytable -c -p all
Show activated IR protocols:
cat /sys/class/rc/rc0/protocols
Testing input device:
evtest /dev/input/by-path/*.ir-event