mceusb Infrared Transceiver (IR Blaster) thru LIRC or kernel

[PogoDancer]

Linux alarm 3.19.1-2-ARCH #1 PREEMPT Mon Mar 16 05:48:43 MDT 2015 armv5tel GNU/Linux
lirc 1:0.9.2.a-1
Bus 001 Device 005: ID 0471:060c Philips (or NXP) Consumer Infrared Transceiver (HP)

With or without LIRC, how do I get the above hardware to work in current Arch as an IR receiver that passes on remote keypresses to other machines on the network, as well as receives them from port 8765 to transmit ("blast") IR to various appliances?

It had been working fine for years (on a Dockstar under Debian as well) but LIRC and what became the kernel's own /dev/input/event* have changed so often (most recently due to systemd) that I can't find applicable instructions anymore.

[PogoDancer]

/sys/class/rc/: No such file or directory

There is no /sys/class/rc, the USB transceiver has no entry in /proc/bus/input/devices, and neither LIRC - ArchWiki nor Getting LIRC to work under systemd (or Arch Linux – LIRC Konfiguration (mceusb) seit systemd Umstellung in German) seem to match the above release.

[PogoDancer]

For the record, the interest is in extending (RF +) IR remote controls bidirectionally over LAN, and saving hundreds per installation over http://shop.mediola.de/ or http://www.irtrans.de/de/shop/lan.php + http://shop.busware.de/product_info.php?products_id=44 - but support for that latter range of 433/868 MHz dongles or their cheaper Chinese counterparts would also be much appreciated.