You will likely need to use an IR receiver module. Google for something like the TSOP1738 part. These are made by Vishay.

Note that the IR receiver module will detect and strip the 38KHz carrier out of the signal and present the resulting signal envelope at its output. This output can be connected to your MCU on a port pin to be detected via a software routine. It is common to use an external interrupt pin input to detect the IR receiver signal. It can be easier to design the decoding state logic if the interrupt logic can respond to a low going edge and then a high going edge of the IR receiver signal in a repeating manner as the signal is received. If your MCU does not have an external interrupt input that can be set by software to generate an interrupt from the desired +/- edge of the IR signal it is possible to provide for this by a simple circuit addition. Insert an XOR gate between the IR receiver and the MCU interrupt input. The IR signal goes to one input of the gate and the other input comes from a separate output port pin. Software sets this output pin high/low depending upon which edge of the IR signal should generate the interrupt and the XOR gate inverts or non-inverts the signal as appropriate.

Michael Karas