Automatic control of students attendance in classrooms using RFID I-CENTRIC 2008 October 26-31, Sliema, Malta Authors: Francisco Silva 1, Vitor Filipe 2 and António Pereira 3 1 INOV - ESTG Leiria, 2 CITAB – Department of Engineering, University of Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro, 3 Superior School of Technology and Management Polytechnic Institute of Leiria,

Overview The problem Proposed solution RFID reader selection RFID reader specification Proposed system architecture RFID Middleware Results Conclusions and future work 2I-CENTRIC 2008 October 26-31, Sliema, Malta

The problem 3I-CENTRIC 2008 October 26-31, Sliema, Malta Registration of all students attendance made in paper in every class. Loss of time for students and the teacher. Validation and insertion of data is done manually. Lack of knowing exactly the students who attended a particular class. More than 200 classrooms and approximately 3000 students.

Proposed solution 4I-CENTRIC 2008 October 26-31, Sliema, Malta Automate the whole system of students attendance registration using RFID. Convert the students identification cards for cards tagged with an RFID tag. Installation of one RFID reader per classroom. Find a cheaper reader due the large number of classrooms. Connect all readers to the educational institution LAN. RFID readers powered by Power over Ethernet (PoE).

RFID reader selection - Different approaches 5I-CENTRIC 2008 October 26-31, Sliema, Malta First: – UHF readers and tags. – Student is automatically identified as he enters in the classroom. – Could violate student privacy. – Very expensive. Second: – LF readers and tags. – Student need to place his card near the RFID reader to register his presence. – Cheaper solution.

RFID reader selection - Search for an appropriate reader 6I-CENTRIC 2008 October 26-31, Sliema, Malta Cheaper readers work through RS-232, Wiegand or USB. The price suffer a large increase whenever a LAN interface exists. Readers with LAN interface have dozens of extra features that arent necessary. Few readers work with PoE.

RFID reader specification 7I-CENTRIC 2008 October 26-31, Sliema, Malta

Proposed system architecture 8I-CENTRIC 2008 October 26-31, Sliema, Malta

RFID Middleware Abstraction layer between educational institutions data base and servers. Dynamic-Link Library (DLL) file. Methods to collect necessary information from the DBMS, from the RFID and web services server. Methods return information in XML format. Flexibility I-CENTRIC 2008 October 26-31, Sliema, Malta9

Results 10I-CENTRIC 2008 October 26-31, Sliema, Malta Test scenario with 5 classrooms. All connected to the LAN. K300 proximity card reader

Conclusions and future work Generic architecture of an intra-connected network of RFID readers within an educational institution. The need of an RFID reader that can transmit data acquired over Ethernet in a distributed environment at a very attractive price. Implementation and validation to the whole architecture with one reader for every classroom. Providing more services to automate more educational institutions processes. 11I-CENTRIC 2008 October 26-31, Sliema, Malta

Questions? Thank you!