STUDENT ATTENDANCE

BASED ON

INTERNET OF THINGS

THE COPPERBELT UNIVERSITY

CHAPTER ONE

1. INTRODUCTION

1.1 General Overview

Attendance to lectures is an area that doesn’t get as much attention as it should in determining a
university students’ academic success. A prerequisite to success in any endeavor is “showing
up”, and lectures are no exception. Methods used at the Copperbelt University to take student
attendance include calling out student names or students manually signing the attendance sheet
which is passed around during a lecture. Due to these methods, attendance data is never readily
available for analysis because paper-based registers are not uploaded to a centralized system. The
process of manually taking and maintaining the attendance records becomes highly cumbersome.

As a result, and with the help of some modern-day technology, one can come up with a way to
help better the monitoring of student attendance. With the recent development of various cloud-
based computing and storage systems, data can be securely stored and retrieved whenever
required. With that being said, this leaves us with the question of how the attendance data is to be
collected to begin with. One such helpful innovation that can be used for this is the Internet of
Things. The Internet of Things or IoT is the interconnecting of physical devices and other items
embedded with electronics, software, sensors, actuators and network connectivity that enable
them to exchange and collect data. These devices gather useful information and transmit it to
other processing devices for interpretation and decision making.

The use of IoT to take attendance for a lecture can save both time and effort. With IoT, devices
that use technology such Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) and Biometrics such as
Fingerprints can be used to capture attendance data and be seamlessly connected to create a
working IoT system that collects and store attendance data with ease. Such a system ensures that
students are individually identified, increases system security and reduces repudiation.

1.2 Problem Statement

With the growing prevalence of the need to monitor student attendance in institutions of higher
learning, utilizing the engineering process to capture and analyze data has become inevitable. In
an environment where student attendance is captured using conventional paper-based records,
the major challenge faced by the administrators is how to consolidate and analyze the records. In
addition, the process of taking attendance in the lecture room by roll call or asking the students to
manually sign the attendance sheet is disturbing to the students and the manual verification of
student details poses great security challenge since such details can be forged.

1.3 Problem Justification

With this project, we hope to bring out a real time attendance tracking system for lecturers and
students which will overcome the tedious manual method. The proposed system uses biometrics
(finger prints) to mark attendance which eliminates the problems of proxy and human error
altogether. It also uses data acquisition by which the attendance stored in the memory is
extracted into a database which is easier to manage and maintain compared to sheets of papers.
The database used will enable the attendance records be accurately calculated and made more
readily available to the administration when needed. Copies of the attendance data can be backed
up easily as it can be uploaded to the cloud. In institutions of higher learning with a large number
of students and staff, distributed biometric identification can go a long way in increasing
security, combating identity-theft, making students more accountable for their class attendance,
ensuring that they reach the 80% attendance threshold and overall get the most out of their
academic experience.

1.4 Aim

The aim of this project is to design and implement an IoT based Biometric Student Attendance
System.

1.5 Objectives

The objectives of the project include:

 To develop an online student attendance system

 To interface fingerprint scanner to an Arduino Uno board
 To send collected data from Atmega32 microcontroller to the IoTGecko platform
 To program Light Emitting Diode (LED) for feedback purposes
 To develop a database attendance system
1.6 Methodology

This section outlines how the necessary data will be collected. It includes the method to be used,
also other various techniques to be used to obtain the correct data for this project.

1.6.0 Descriptive Research Design

Descriptive research will be used to obtain information concerning the current status of the
phenomena to describe what exists with respect to variables or conditions in a situation. The
major reason of using descriptive research is to provide an accurate and detailed description of
the research problem.

1.6.1 Data Collection Tools

In this project primary and secondary data were used, the secondary data was obtained from
relevant books, journals and from the internet.

1.6.1.0 Books and Journals

Articles, Books and Journals containing written and published work were reviewed in order to
get a better insight on the subject matter.

1.6.1.1 The Internet

The internet refers to the physical network that links computers across the globe. This will help
us in acquiring information pertaining to how best to present the solution.

1.6.1.2 Consultations

Consultations will be done with various professionals in the field of study. The project
coordinator and supervisor will be among those to be consulted.

1.6.1.3 Scope

The Project will take place in a time period in which measurable results will be achieved. With
full accomplishment of the intended tasks and acquisition of the required components, the project
hopes to provided a real time Student attendance system with a working unit. The working unit
will consist of a microcontroller and appropriate ID authentication devices that will interface
with students to record attendance to lectures and upload the recorded data to a cloud based
database that can be accessed by students and lecturers. It also hopes to provide a working
simulation in appropriate simulation software