If you haven’t heard of Electromagnetic Field (EMF) Camp, imagine a field in the quaint English countryside, temporarily populated by 2,500 curious tech/maker enthusiasts; fiber internet, radio masts, robotic bartenders, lasers illuminating the sky, and wild/wacky inventions as far as the eye can see.
One of these wacky inventions was the EMF Roamer, a quarter-scale wooden Tesla Cybertruck, deployed to roam around the side, controlled by anyone over the internet!
![](https://chris-stubbs.co.uk/wp/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/52125273707_4ab982b7a7_c.jpg)
Just allowing people to drive it line of sight wasn’t good enough! Especially not in the world of the Internet of Things. Live video from a camera, along with the location on a map is streamed to the user while they have control of the roamer.
A free for all in terms of control would have been a mess, so we devised a queue system. People could join the queue in their web browser and wait their turn, or provide a mobile phone number to receive an SMS when their turn is up (thanks Vonage!). The queue system is “serverless”, in that it does not require a dedicated server. Instead, it runs on simple shared hosting, with PHP coordinating the queue on-demand, which is stored in a MySQL database.
To build a queue system for yourself, take a look at the WebUserQueue project on my GitHub, or follow the guide on the Vonage Developer Blog.