Development of an IoT-based Student Attendance System

Abstract

This thesis was carried out to study the ability to create students’ attendance system by using the available technologies in the frontend, backend, and IoT technologies to substitute the current way of manually taking the attendance in Metropolia University of Applied Sciences.

A comprehensive analysis of the topic was conducted. Such technologies, as React JS, Fire-base, Linux and NoSQL databases were examined in detail. Their pros and cons were identified and compared to other technologies that are used in cloud-based development. After a long research, a working IoT-based application prototype for student’s attendance was developed. The prototype consists of the IoT kit component which is put in the classroom to get the attendance using a raspberry pi, RFID reader, and 7” touchable screen. user-friendly interface, a possibility to easily check in and out without contact with the IoT kit, monitor the attendance by the lecturer and access real-time information anywhere via the Internet. The prototype also includes an interface for the administrator of the system to manage databases, storage, hosting, and authentication of the system.

The application was built based on the studied technologies and uses the IoT, cloud computing, big data as well single page application frame work (React JS) as an infrastructure to have a better control and flexibility. The project also suggested a future development after it was used and started to collect data. Machine learning analysis could be used to study the behavior of students’ attendance individually.

The thesis concludes with the thoughts about the technologies used in the development and the future plan to integrate the system with the organization system to document the attendance automatically in students page.