Okay, you are starting ttsclock after empire starts, maybe that is delaying the start of the player for a second or so. Try increasing the time delay on start_empire from 10 (seconds) to 30, just for testing. Then start up the player, watch the boot log, and when you see these lines:

start_empire: Starting Empire...
IrDA: Registered device irda0

Then you can try to beam something over. The line:

irlap_driver_rcv(), Unknown frame ef received!

usually means that some other program was trying to use the irda port, in this case the player application. For some reason that I don't fully understand, Empire cannot be started until AFTER the player app has been started. This is the reason for the start_empire script, it just sleeps for x seconds then starts empire after the player has (presumably) started.

After you have verified that Palantir/Empire works with the delay setting at 30 or 60, then you can narrow it down to probably 11 or 12.