Making a remote for a smart TV for use outside of network

Hello! This is my first post here on the forums, i hope im making this thread in the correct place.
My grandmother is in a nursing home, and currently is set up with basic local cable, and with a smart tv to watch netflix and such. however she is unable to use the remote or to figure out how to use the smart portion of the TV. i am sometimes able to walk her through what she needs to do but often she will get frustrated and give up. i would like to make a device where i can control her tv from anywhere. my thoughts on how to do it are these. make a device with a raspberry pi and an IR sensor. the PI would be able to receive commands from outside networks that would then send IR signals to the tv just like the remote would if i were there.
my other thought is somehow making an application on my android phone that could remote into the network at the nursing home and connect to her smart tv as if i were there using the wifi.
i hope my questions all make sense and everyone can see what im trying to do. i am curious if this is possible to do and if it is, what do i need to learn in order to accomplish it. im good with hardware but idont knoow any coding. i will learn what i need but id like to have an idea on the best route to even start this project. thank you kindly for any advice. Cheers!

If you got $20-30, you can buy a solution
This forum recommended

Something like this

Otherwise you might want to look up either a raspberry pi wifi tv remote

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woah thanks for showing me this! that will solve the biggest issue of just woking the basic tv. now i just need to figure out if there is something i can control her smart tv from as well for netflix. but she mostly watches cable so this will be insanely helpful. thank you so much for the reply!

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