Project Idea | Attendance System Using Smart Card

1. Project Title:
Smart Attendance System

2. Introduction:
The current attendance system in most of the educational institutions is paper based, wherein the students are expected to sign an attendance sheet. This system has several disadvantages like:
(a) The students can mark attendance of their fellow classmates without being caught.
(b) Punctuality of individuals cannot be recorded
(c) Time consuming
(d) It can be lost easily

3. Conceptual framework:
The smart attendance will help to mark the attendance of the students attending a particular lecture.
The following is the procedure to mark the attendance using the smart cards:
i) Every student of the institution is issued (by the institution) a unique smart card that he/she must always carry.
ii) The students, at the lecture hall entry, are expected to insert the smart card in the Card Acceptance Machine, which will record the student entering the lecture hall.
iii) The communication used is ‘Active-Passive Peer Interaction’ wherein the Active component is installed on the entry gate constantly generates an electromagnetic field, which, in turn, creates a small current in the chip inside the card/token whenever it comes into range – hence the chips do not need power of their own. The moment current flows, the chip and the reading component on the gate can interact with each other.
iv) An encryption key is generated each time an interaction takes place to prevent other Smart Card readers from accessing data. This is done to make sure that student attends the stipulated lecture only. Every Lecture Hall has what we call the ‘Lecture Hall Code’. The key is encrypted with lecture hall code on the card at the entry gate and again decrypted at the exit gate.
v) To avoid proxy attendance, a people counter is also placed at the entry of the lecture hall. The people counter records the footfall to count the number of people entering the lecture hall.
vi) The exit from the lecture hall is also marked by the smart card insertion into the CAD, just to ensure the correctness of the recorded data and decrypt it.
vii) After decryption, the student’s attendance for that lecture is increased by 1 in the institution’s database.

4. Tools Used:

Smart Card: A smart card, chip card, or integrated circuit card (ICC) is any pocket-sized card that has embedded integrated circuits.[1] Smart cards are made of plastic, generally polyvinyl chloride, but sometimes polyethylene terephthalate based polyesters, acrylonitrile butadiene styrene or polycarbonate.
Smart cards can be either contact or contact less smart card. Smart cards can provide personal identification, authentication, data storage, and application processing.

People Counter: A people counter is an electronic device that is used to measure the number of people traversing a certain passage or entrance.

Footfall: Footfall measures the number of people who enter a shop or business in a particular period of time.

Smart Card Reader: Smart Card Readers are also known as card programmers (because they can write to a card), card terminals, card acceptance device (CAD), or an interface device (IFD).
When the smart card and the card reader come in contact, each identifies itself to the other by sending and receiving information. If the messages exchanged do not match, no further processing takes place. So, unlike ordinary bank cards, smart cards can defend themselves against unauthorized users and uses in innovative security measures.
Card Contact Types refers to how the contact between a card reader and a smart card is physically made. There are two primary types of contact: landing contact and friction contact (also known as sliding or wiping). For card readers featuring friction contact, the contact part is fixed. The contact wipes on the card surface and the chip when a card is inserted. For card readers featuring the landing type, the contact part is movable. The contact “lands” on the chip after a card is wholly inserted. In general, card readers of the landing type provide better protection to the card than that of the friction type.

5. Application:
It is used for marking attendance in educational institutions where attendance management is itself a time consuming and cumbersome process. It will make the attendance system smooth and reliable.