1. Wireless Attendance System
Glendowie College

2. Problem/Issue
Year 13’s need to sign out for study but the current system is slow.
Manual entry on a piece of paper is slow and causes large queues
On average it takes 12 minutes for year 13’s to all sign their attendance
No security measures means easy to fake attendance. Eg People signing each other out

3. Solution To have an automated attendance system
Using a barcode scanner and student ID cards can identify students
Attendance can be logged onto a Google spread sheet
Using a camera we can photo verify the student’s attendance
Photos are uploaded to Google Drive

4. Subsystems
The three inputs are the keypad, the barcode scanner, and the camera
We decided to use Raspberry Pi because of its networking abilities allowing us to use Google’s APIs to edit Google spread sheets and uploading images to Google Drive.

5. Keypad
The keypad was made by soldiering on key switches to a PCB. We made the PCB using Diptrace and engraved it onto a copper board using a engraver machine.
The keypad is connected to the Raspberry Pi’s GPIO Pins
The Keycaps are 3D printed

6. Barcode Scanner
The barcode scanner acts as a keyboard typing out whatever it scans.
Scanned barcodes return a student ID number so we look at the ID number in a database

7. Camera
This was recommended by our stakeholders because they wanted extra security then the current system.
The camera connects to Raspberry Pi and is controlled via code
Photos are uploaded to google drive
In the event of suspicious activity deans can check to see if the student was there when the logged their attendance

8. Software
The program is coded in python some features of the program is
Multi-Threading to allow processing and input to work at the same time
Thread Queues allow for multiple student entries to be taken while they are completed in the background in sequence. This allows for several students to use the machine without processing wait times