I also own some devices that have web interfaces for control. Now I first tried browser calls too. But that turned out to be real slow especially if the browser was not started yet.
But now I am using wget. This command can use the same http syntax.

If there is an & in the command I need to quote this too. Otherwise the linux command line will use it as the background command.

wget -q 'http:/ip/admin.cgi/some_command?test=1&b=2' &

runs wget in background without any output. The Irreco test feature is great to see if it worked - remove -q during test.