OT: electronics and IR/Radio

[SirPoonga]

Has someone here made a custom IR remote?
I figured I'd ask here because some people here know stuff about electronics.

Here's my problem.  I have an mp3 jukebox on my home theater system.  The hardware (decoder) was found on ebay.  Pretty nice.  All I had to do was supply the power, lcd, buttons, and cd drive.  It had a warranty, I think the company that made the set-top box must have made a mistake and needed money back on left over stock.
Ok, it has 5 buttons.  previous, stop, play, next, menu.  I also currently have a toggle switch on the backlit LCD.
here's what I want.  I just want a remote control, whether IR or radio, with 6 buttons.  One for each of the abilities above.  I'd like to learn about 555 timers and hook up the lcd backlight to a timer.  The backlight can;t stay on otherwise it gets really hot, but it is nice for reading the title of the song form accross the room.  So a 10 sec timer would be nice.

My question is, how do I do this?

[Beley]

There are a few companies that make compleat RF remote control chips for custom remote control systems

one company is called Linx Technologies
http://www.linxtechnologies.com/ldocs/main.html

look at this page for examples
http://www.rentron.com/rf_remote_control.htm