Some years ago I had stumbled across "Touchsquid" a company that supported various forms of remote control via IR enabled Android tablets.
Well, Touchsquid may no longer be in business and IR enabled phones or tablets are hard to find.
But if someone is willing to do a whole lot of DIY, they may be able to build their own custom remote app for a phone or tablet with the software found at the link below.
I don't think I will attempt it, but if someone wanted to they may be able to implement functionality to trigger some of the "curl" APIs (not really sure it would be possible - but seems plausible) for whatever purpose Channels allows.
If you try this and have success, please post here.