DESIGN AND CONSTRUCTION OF A BIOMETRIC STUDENTS’ TIME AND ATTENDANCE LOGGING SYSTEM

ABSTRACT

In recent time, there has been high level of impersonation experienced on a daily basis in both private and public sectors, the ghost worker syndrome which has become a menace across all tiers of government, employers concerns over the levels of employee absence in their workforce and the difficulty in managing student attendance during lecture periods. Fingerprints are a form of biometric identification which is unique and does not change in one’s entire lifetime. This paper presents the biometric attendance logging system using fingerprint technology for Students in a university environment. It consists of two processes namely; enrollment and authentication. During enrollment, the fingerprint of the user is captured and its unique features extracted and stored in a database along with the users identity as a template for the subject. During authentication, the fingerprint of the user is captured again and the extracted features compared with the template in the database to determine a match before attendance is made. The fingerprint-based attendance management system was implemented with Arduino Framework for the Hardware and Firmware while Microsoft’s C# on the. NET framework was used for the User Interface and Microsoft’s Structured Query Language (SQL) Server 2005 as the back end database. The experimental result shows that the developed system is highly efficient in the verification of users fingerprint with an accuracy level of 97.4%. The average execution time for the developed system was 4.29 seconds as against 18.48 seconds for the existing system. Moreover, the result shows a well secured and reliable system capable of preventing impersonation.

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

• BACKGROUND STUDY.

Every Nigerian university has the obligation to record and take student attendance during lecture periods every semester. The accuracy of this record of attendance have been marred by many challenging problems which ranges from the cumbersome nature of the paper sheets used in recording, manipulation of the attendance record by fraudulent students, emplacement of the attendance records after taking them and so on. It therefore becomes very difficult for the regular management and update of such records. Also the calculation of the percentage of attendance to ascertain the qualification of student to write a particular examination may not be achieved.

For the stated reasons, a biometric based attendance logging system is developed and designed to overcome the problems associated with the attendance system.

• PROBLEM STATEMENT

As already stated, in most tertiary institutions, there is usually an outstanding rule that a student must achieve at least 70% class attendance before he or she is allowed to write semester examinations for the courses registered by the student.

The usual method employed by the lecturers is to capture the students’ attendance manually. This manual method of capturing students’ attendance is not accurate as most of the absentee students are usually covered up by their colleagues who normally sign attendance register on their behalf.

In order to have a more accurate record of students’ attendance, a system that can reduce or eliminate the problems associated with manual capturing is needed. In this project, the Fingerprint technology is to be deployed to capture students’ attendance in the class. The fingerprint device developed will be used to clock in the students at the beginning of lectures.

• AIM AND OBJECTIVES

The aim of this project is to Design and Implement a Biometric Students’ Time and Attendance Logging System.

The objectives of the project are:

• To develop a fingerprint students’ attendance capturing system and compare it with manual system.
• To develop a software to store students’ database and attendance records.

• PROJECT SCOPE

The scope of this work is to develop a software for fingerprint recognition and identification as well as database to store students’ information and attendance records using Visual c# and SQL server. The software will be integrated with a fingerprint Hardware designed with Arduino.

• PROJECT SIGNIFICANCE

The system will help lecturers take accurate record of students’ attendance.

• OUTLINE OF REMAINING CHAPTERS

This thesis contains five chapters. The second gives an overview of existing biometric attendance logging systems.

Chapter three is all about the methodology employed in the realization of this project.  It discusses the approach by which the aims and objectives of the project is achieved. Also it states the theories and calculations involved in the design analysis. Alongside the hardware implementation. Furthermore, the mode of operation of the proposed design is explained.

Chapter four describes the prototype’s software implementation.

Chapter five sets out the tests and results for analysis, simulations and experiment carried out. The bill and evaluation of material/components used is also outlined this chapter.

The conclusions will also be made in chapter five where the summary of the study is discussed.  In addition, problems encountered and recommendations for further designs are outlined in this chapter.

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