Virtual Booth

In an environment where a large scale of crowd gathers such as university mass lectures with over 50 attendees where attendance is compulsory, recording and managing attendance accurately and efficiently becomes a challenging yet essential task for the instructors and administrative staff. The traditional attendance systems require attendees to manually sign in for the attendance records that are prone to human error such as illegible handwriting, missing signatures, or incorrect dates. Furthermore, this method is vulnerable to attendance falsification through buddy punching. Some institutions might resort to thumb print recognition system to capture the attendance, but this method is time consuming as the finger must be at the correct position and precisely aligned with the scanner so that the system can match it with the stored image, which often results in delays and bottlenecks. Quick Response (QR) code is another popular method for attendance taking, which required the use smartphones. However, this method may lead to falsification of attendance as well, as QR codes can easily be shared with other students who might not even be in the classroom, compromising the integrity of attendance data. Therefore, to mitigate these problems, we are proposing the use of RFID cards that have read/write capability. As a proof of concept, a prototype model was built using an ESP32 microcontroller, a pair of RFID reader and card, and an LCD screen. When students attend the class, they will tap their RFID card against the reader, the system will instantly record and store the student’s name, student ID, and timestamps in a cloud storage. The LCD screen will also display student’s name, student ID, and timestamps. Since all the data are stored digitally, this solution reduces the administrative workload and ensures accuracy of the data stored. Additionally, it not only enhances efficiency and transparency but also supports environmental sustainability by reducing paper usage. We have tested this prototype, and it seems to be working well. This is a simple solution and cheap implementation for a class attendance system. In the future, we plan to substitute RFID cards with actual student’s card in the prototype and explore the potential of using GPS to track student actual location in the system.