CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

Background of the Study

Student absences jeopardize student and school success. Academic achievement scores are correlated with school attendance. Students who are not at school cannot receive instruction. Excessive school absence is a precursor of school dropout and is related to juvenile delinquency. And, because average daily attendance rates are a common determiner of school funding, absences mean that schools have less resources to do the job. Given all this, it is not surprising that reducing school absences is a top priority for many schools. (http://smhp.psych.ucla.edu) Now-a-days intelligent automation has stepped its presence in every field all over the world. This project has a stepping in the attendance and power management of the classrooms in the colleges/schools. The use of low cost technologies for highly reliable applications with the help of newly innovated algorithms makes the automation process to reach the consumers at cheaper and reliable cost. (http://www.muxtronics.com)
The widespread of embedded computer networks as part of everyday peoples’ lives is leading the current research towards smart environments and Ambient Intelligence (AmI). AmI is a new information paradigm where people are empowered through a digital environment that is “aware” of their presence and context and is sensitive, adaptive and responsive to their needs.

Mark Weiser, described the smart environments as physical worlds that invisibly interact with smart sensors, actuators, displays, and computational elements that are seamlessly implanted into our daily live activities. However, smart environments have to be associated with different Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques and algorithms including artificial neural networks, evolutionary computation, swarm intelligence, artificial immune systems, and fuzzy systems. Together with logic, deductive reasoning, expert systems, case-based reasoning and symbolic machine learning systems, these intelligent algorithms help in forming smart environments. Combining the AI techniques and algorithms with smart environments leads to new research field named “Ambient Intelligence (AmI)“. AmI is defined as an electronic environment that is sensitive and responsive to the presence of people in specific environment. ( R. Ramadan, 2009)

Automated Attendance Monitoring System is a system located on every classroom, equipped with biometric technology and automated SMS software, interfaced with a computer server where the database is then saved.
Statement of the Problem

The main objective in conducting this design is to automate the classroom attendance system of this institution. Specifically, it sought to answer the following questions:
1. Does it ensure the authenticity of the student ?
2. Does it provide parents the opportunity to monitor the attendance of students?
3. Does it save class time for discussion instead of the traditional roll-call of the names of each student?

Theoretical framework of the study

This research is stimulated for the development of the school’s attendance monitoring system, provided with the biometrics technology and automated system. This will help the school authorities to have a permanent and more secured database management in attendance monitoring. A study from Teleron 2000 “Data Acquisition on Class Hour Attendance of the Faculty in Southwestern University” features the same concept as Automated Classroom Monitoring System, but his study is focusing only on school staff. Teleron used Barcodes on the staff’s ID that contains the data and the Bar code reader on the other hand reads the bar codes as the staff swipes the IDs. He recommends the use of biometric technology and further enhancement of his study, which convinced the researchers to push through to work with Automated Attendance Monitoring System.

Biometric devices nowadays are preferable than other authentication technologies such as barcodes and magnetic stripe scanners. This kind of technology is difficult to alter or tampered because it needs a unique pattern for authentication. Amazingly, human finger possesses unique ridges and valleys that differ from one human being from another, even identical twins.

The first advantage of using this new technology is the uniqueness and it is also the main characteristic which allows biometrics technology to become more and more important in our lives. With uniqueness of biometrics technology, each individual's identification will be single most effective identification for that user. A chance of two users having the same identification in the biometrics security technology system is nearly zero (Tistarelli, 2009).

Significance of the Study

People who will be benefited by this project design favor those in:
TEACHERS. This innovated technology will be able to help the teachers to mark and update student class attendance quickly. She/he can easily print hard copies of the attendance in case of necessity. It will lessen wasted time on roll calls and teacher can immediately proceed into his/her lecture.

STUDENTS. Our design will be mostly be benefited by the students. Automated Attendance Monitoring System will be much help for the efficiency of keeping record of attendance of the students. In case of queries of the data, the students can easily request for his/her record of attendance to be printed out. It will also stimulate the students’ positive viewpoint towards attending school.

PARENTS/GUARDIANS. The parents will easily track their sons and daughters’ attendance by simply sending the right keyword to the Automated Attendance Monitoring System through Short Message Service (SMS). They will know at once when the students are really attending the class or cutting classes when the system will reply after they sent the SMS. They can also ask for a hard copy of the attendance, for example: they want the record for the whole month of January; the teacher will look up on the records of that particular student and then print it right away.

Scope and Delimitation

The Automated Classroom Monitoring System is being innovated purposely for the benefit of the students of this institution. The system gives the teachers the opportunity and the convenience to monitor the daily attendance of the students in each class. This project intends to replace the manual routine of checking the attendance of the students to a more advanced and easier way with the help of the biometric device. Upon entering the classroom, each student will place their thumb on the fingerprint scanner. Fingerprint sensors solution first illuminates the print with a laser or LED light and then captures the image. Once the image is captured the digital information is transferred to a digital signal processor to generate a match. The digital signal processing use algorithms to extract the unique features and patterns of each print to generate a unique digital code, once the fingerprint is recognized, he/she can enter the classroom and the attendance was already recorded into the database. If the student wishes to go out for personal reasons, he/she can go out because he was already inside the classroom and his attendance was already recorded in the system. But for those who are late, they can’t enter the class premises once the class has started.

Parents and guardians will also have the opportunity to monitor the students’ class attendance. Upon enrollment, the student will be given a code for the Short Messaging Service (SMS). That code will be used by the parents to send a text message to the system, inquiring about the status of the student’s attendance. The teachers in charge can also text through the system to inform the student if he/she cannot attend the class.

Definition of Terms

Listed below are the terminologies and the conceptual meaning used in the study.

ATTENDANCE. The action or state of going regularly to or being present at a place or event.

Attendance in this study refers to the physical appearance of the student inside the classroom attending a class lecture on a regular school day.
BIOMETRICS. It is the measurement and analysis of unique physical or behavioral characteristics (as fingerprint or voice patterns) especially as a means of verifying personal identity BROADBAND DONGLE. A device that can be plugged into a USB port to enable wireless access from a computer to an external Wi-Fi device, as a mobile phone, or to the Internet.

CAPACITOR. A device used to store charge in an electrical circuit. A capacitor functions much like a battery, but charges and discharges much more efficiently (batteries, though, can store much more charge).

CELLULAR PHONE. A mobile radiotelephone, often in an automobile, that uses a network of short-range transmitters located in overlapping cells throughout a region, with a central station making connections to regular telephone lines. Also called mobile telephone. Most mobile phones provide voice communications, Short Message Service (SMS), Multimedia Message Service (MMS), and newer phones may provide Internet services such as Web browsing and e-mail.

COMPUTER SYSTEM UNIT. The system unit, also known as a "tower" or "chassis," is the main part of a desktop computer. It includes the motherboard, CPU, RAM, and other components. The system unit also includes the case that houses the internal components of the computer.

FINGERPRINT SCANNER. Fingerprint scanning essentially provides an identification of a person based on the acquisition and recognition of those unique patterns and ridges in a fingerprint. The actual fingerprint identification process will change slightly between products and systems. The basis of identification, however, is nearly the same. Standard systems are comprised of a sensor for scanning a fingerprint and a processor which stores the fingerprint database and software which compares and matches the fingerprint to the predefined database. Within the database, a fingerprint is usually matched to a reference number, or PIN number which is then matched to a person's name or account.
INTEGRATED CIRCUIT. A monolithic integrated circuit (IC) or often referred to as a microchip or simply chip is a miniaturized electronic circuit (consisting mainly of semiconductor devices, as well as passive components) which has been manufactured in the surface of a thin substrate of semiconductor material.

LIGHT EMITTING DIODE (LED). LED stands for light-emitting diode. LEDs are small light sources that become illuminated by the movement of electrons through a semiconductor material. LEDs can be integrated into all sorts of products to provide white and colored light, such as flashlights, light bulbs, and integrated light fixtures.
MONITOR - To watch, keep track of, or check usually for a special purpose. In this study, to monitor is an act of being watchful to every detail of the students’ behavior, performance and conduct while they are inside the school premises.

PRINTER. It is an electronic device that prints text or graphics on paper as hard copies. In this study, we used the ink-jet type of printer. It produces high quality print-outs and is very user-friendly.

PRINTED CIRCUIT BOARD (PCB). A printed circuit board or PCB is used to mechanically support and electrically connect electronic components using conductive pathways, tracks or signal traces etched from copper sheets laminated onto a non-conductive substrate.
RESISTOR. A resistor is a component of a circuit that resists the flow of electrical current. It has two terminals across which electricity must pass, and it is designed to drop the voltage of the current as it flows from one terminal to the other. Resistors are primarily used to create and maintain known safe currents within electrical components.

CHAPTER II

REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

Compilation of related studies of some authors regarding the significance and need of studying and developing the Automated Attendance Monitoring System are highlighted in this chapter. Attendance monitoring issues are now brought up to school authorities by individuals, student groups, and teachers because of the rampant cases of cutting classes, tardiness and truancy of some students. Different classroom management strategies have been implemented to gradually amend the students’ behavior in class especially tardiness.

“Student comprehension or seatwork is not monitored on a regular basis. In contrast, strong and consistent management and organizational skills have been identified as leading to fewer classroom discipline problems.” (Froyen, L.A., & Iverson, A.M. 1999).

In every class, everyone is aware of the same old routine of the attendance roll-call, where the teacher is calling out names and present students raises their hands or says “present” to let the teacher know of his/her presence. Another method is to circulate a piece of paper around the classroom and let students sign in it. Now, this practice is time consuming and it is very easy for students to cheat their attendance, i.e. he/she asks a favor to another student to sign for her. These will give the students the opportunity to sneak outside the classroom and be somewhere else. Since parents are assuming that their sons and daughters did attend their classes, where in fact they have not. Later on, they will be informed with regret about the students’ tardiness and absences.

If students are outside the school premises, their activities cannot be monitored anymore. These acts of the students threaten teachers and parents especially when their safety is concerned. Different schools implemented additional rules and different approach concerning the truancy, cutting classes and dropping-out of students.

These problems made us to grip tight and pursue to this project, as this will likely help the situation and hopefully amend the attitude of students towards attending school. Automation of attendance monitoring tries to make it simpler and a faster system for everyday cycle in a classroom. In the study of Mehmet Dicle, Ph.D., and economics professor John Levendis, Ph.D., of Loyola University New Orleans, they have created a computer program designed to electronically check students into class, eliminating the need for a lengthy roll call and saving valuable class time. “I have about 75 students in each of my classes and spend between 5-10 minutes at the beginning of each one calling roll, instead of teaching,” Levendis said. “With the program we created, we’ve substantially reduced check in time.”(M. Dicle, Ph.D., & J.Levendis, Ph.D., 2011) RFID student attendance monitoring system is a system that will take students attendance by using RFID technology. This system mainly comprises of Nokia 6212 NFC mobile which is used as RFID reader, RFID tags which are embedded to the students ID cards and Server machine which is likely computer. This system records student’s attendance to an attendance database server. (Rodrigo, 2012)
“With the help of an attendance system, institutions and other organizations can save time and money. When we talk about an attendance management system it is not specifically only for schools or companies. It can be used everywhere where people in large number work. Apart from saving time this system also helps in saving money of the organization which was otherwise lost in monitoring, tracing and updating information.
Cost spent on buying supplies like ink, paper, files, sheets, pens, punching machines, and many more all can be saved with the use of automated systems.
This system benefits teachers, management staffs in schools and colleges and managers in companies to easily view all the collected data within a single click. This stored data is stored in a database and hence is safely stored for years together. The same data is stored in documents are sure to get misplaced soon in the near future. To avoid all such problems all the organizations are using this system for a peaceful maintenance.
This system can be very beneficial for human resource departments too as they can view the records of their employees and then provide salary to them. With this system issuing the salary would not at all be tough for companies as they can very easily check the record of employees and issue the salary. This system if used can be used for a long term process. Archive data too can be obtained as the data base is updated every year with a fresh set of important information and records.” (G. Radhakrishnan, 2012

CHAPTER III

METHODOLOGY

The research group conducting this study is composed with 5 members, tasked with the assignments of their familiarity has sought different kinds of studies appropriate for the field of our course. After series of brainstorming, researching and analyzing we came up with this study and entitled it “Automated Attendance Monitoring System”.

After coming up with the title, the researchers started to articulate problem statements. They began pinpointing the objectives of the study to define the parameters of their study.

This was conducted in Colegio de la Purisima Concepcion during the school year 2012-2013. This project was pursued in order to enhance and amend the existing manual attendance monitoring method into an advanced automated system, using biometrics technology. This project aims to help the school administration to keep reliable soft and hard copies of the daily attendance of the students, also for parents to monitor their sons and daughters right after they leave their homes, expecting they are in school.

The Automated Attendance Monitoring System uses biometrics technology, specifically, a fingerprint scanner to take and record the attendance of the students. Upon entering the classroom, the students whose class is scheduled into that particular room scans his thumb into the fingerprint scanner to record his “IN” data for him to be admitted inside. The data is then sent to the school database for storage in that day and time. Every class, the time depends on the teacher from the start of the class hour for everybody to be recorded present, if a student goes inside after that time allowance, he/she will be automatically late. In case of necessity for the students to go out, he/she can go out as he wishes because he was already recorded upon entering the classroom. As parents are concerned, another technology is integrated with the system, an SMS-based monitoring system that will accommodate parents’ queries regarding the students’ attendance in school. Upon enrolling, the students will provide their cellular numbers to be given to the Registrar’s Office to encode them in the system. Only those encoded numbers will be recognized and entertained by the system for the confidentiality of the students’ identity and records. The parents will text a code and I.D. number to a unique and designated number, inquiring about the status of the student. The system will automatically reply with the data requested by the parents. For documentation purposes, concerned parties can ask hard copies of the attendance of the students for the whole week, whole month or even for the whole school year.

The Automated Attendance Monitoring System can be also used to the teaching staff and employees of the institution, ideal to be placed on the guard house upon entering the school gate.

After reviewing and deliberating operations of the system, the group started to work with the Input / Output card to be used in the project using the decoded address 340H-341H. Then they started designing the schematic diagram of their PCB layout of the I/O card and the external circuit. After completion with the schematic diagram, they started to print the layout on a presensitized Printed Circuit Board.

The following are the tools and instruments used by the researchers in conducting this project:

Mini-Drill CT-800. A miniature drill is a very convenient instrument designed for drilling and making holes, grinding and polishing small objects and parts, as well as for working in hard to reach places, where a regular drill can't be used. As a rule a mini drill is supplied in a convenient plastic case and comes with a set of various attachments. Miniature drills are sometimes called etchers or borers.
Pliers. A hand tool used to hold objects firmly, for bending, or physical compression. Generally, pliers consist of a pair of metal first-class levers joined at a fulcrum positioned closer to one end of the levers, creating short jaws on one side of the fulcrum, and longer handles on the other side.

Screwdriver . A tool for driving screws or bolts with special slots, and sometimes for rotating other machine elements with the mating drive system. A typical hand screwdriver comprises an approximately cylindrical handle of a size and shape to be held by a human hand, and an axial shaft fixed to the handle, the tip of which is shaped to fit a particular type of screw.

Soldering iron. A hand tool used in soldering. It supplies heat to melt the solder so that it can flow into the joint between two work pieces. A soldering iron is composed of a heated metal tip and an insulated handle. Heating is often achieved electrically, by passing an electric current (supplied through an electrical cord or battery cables) through a resistive heating element.

Soldering Iron Holder. The safest place to keep your soldering iron or hot knife cutting tool when in use. The sponge, when moistened, keeps the iron tip clean and removes excess solder. Chrome-plated coils with a 3-1/4 inch x 5 inch enameled steel base.

CHAPTER IV

PRESENTATION AND ANALYSIS OF DATA

In this chapter, data analysis is presented. The tables for IC pin configurations are presented to show the binary combination circuit to decode the input and output addresses. The I/O card is used to transfer data between the central processing unit and a peripheral device and is inserted to an ISA slot for interfacing or communication of hardware and software. ISA is a type of bus used in PCs for adding expansion cards. For example, an ISA slot may be used to add a video card, a network card, or an extra serial port. The original 8-bit version of PCI uses a 62 pin connection and supports clock speeds of 8 and 33 MHz.
Table 1
74LS138 Pin configuration
Select Outputs
C B A Y0 Y1 Y2 Y3 Y4 Y5 Y6 Y7
X X X 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
X X X 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
0 0 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 1
0 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 1
0 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 1
1 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 1
1 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 1
1 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 1
1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0

H341-Input
Bit Hexadecimal Equivalent Bit Value Function
1
2 H1
H2 0
0 Door Motor
Stop
1
2 H1
H2 1
0 Door Motor
Open
1
2 H1
H2 0
1 Door Motor
Close
3 H1
H2 0
1 Lightings
LED Off
3
H4 0 Lightings
LED On
4
H8 0 Fan
Off
4 H8 1 Fan
On

H340-Output
Bit Hexadecimal Equivalent Bit Value Function
1
2 H1
H1 0
1 Door Opened
Door not Opened
2
2 H2
H2 0
1 Door Closed
Door not Closed
3
3 H4
H4 0
1 Weight Pad Pressed
Weight Pad not Pressed
4
5
6
7
N/A
N/A
N/A
8
8 H80
H80 0
1 External Circuit Connected
External Circuit not Connected

CHAPTER V

SUMMARY, CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION

This project design is entitled Automated Classroom Monitoring System which purpose is to upgrade the manual monitoring system of class attendance of the students into a more advanced and efficient system with the use of biometric technology.
Traditionally, five to ten minutes of a class is wasted just for attendance checking and nowadays, parent cannot guarantee that their student attends their classes regularly. To ease these hustles, the researchers believe that the proposed project design will make the class run smoothly for teacher, give peace of mind to the parents and help students to be responsible in attending their classes.
Classrooms that have this system will only open the door if a student enrolled in the scheduled class logs in his/her thumb mark into the biometric device. In case a student would be late, that is fifteen minutes after the start of the class; the system will not permit the said student to enter the room. Teachers have the option to open the door, if there is a visitor or students need to go out for necessary purpose. (In case of emergency, the system will design some necessary pre-cautions regarding the lock system). The student who went out can re-register his/her thumb print to enter the class again. The teacher can also print the recorded attendance.
In this project, researchers used the finger print scanner. With this technology, it assures the authentication of each student that enters the classroom so that the attendance will be credible. With this project, monitoring of the class attendance will be of ease for the teachers because it will save time intended for class discussion and will help the parents to check the standing of the students inside the class with the help of short messaging service (SMS). Provided with a unique key word for each student, the parents will be able to monitor their sons and daughters’ attendance immediately. This is designed purposely for classroom attendance of this institution. However, this would also be suitable not only in classroom, but also for the staffs and faculties of the school.

The biometric fingerprint scanner is integrated with the Input/output card so that when each student scans their finger, the data collected by the scanner will be authenticated and then processed by the computer and transmits the output to the miniature classroom.

Researchers were given the 0340H-0341H address to decode and designed a schematic diagram and layout using OrCAD software. They used a presensitized photo printed circuit board for the circuit. Integrated Circuit, resistors, capacitors, and transistors are then soldered to the board and tested it.

Next, they researched about the biometrics functionality and applied it on their research. They used Visual Basic programming for the program that will be used to run the system.

The researchers made the miniature classroom using fiber glass, vinyl tiles and plywood. After months of careful research and hard work with the help of God, the researchers were able to finish the project and produce a working model of Automated Classroom Monitoring System.

Recommendation: For enhancement and for the actual operation of the project, the researchers would like to recommend the following:
1. The biometric finger scanner to be used should be of the high end quality.
2. The scanner should be heavy duty to support the number of students using it.

Bibliography
 http://humanresources.about.com
 http://dictionary.reference.com
 (http://www.webopedia.com
 (http://www.techterms.com
 (http://www.sciencedaily.com
 (http://www.energystar.gov/
 (http://en.wikipedia.org
 (http://www.wisegeek.com
 (http://www.youtube.com
 (http://www.micromark.com
 (http://encyclobeamia.solarbotics.net
 (Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/7107209)

Project Development Cost
I/O Card Construction (Breadboard/PCB)
Components Quantity Unit Price Cost
Breadboard 4 200 800
Presensitized PCB
(12x12)
1 1,700 1,700
Wires 20 (meters) 5 (per meter) 100
Integrated Circuit
(74LS138)
7 45 315
Integrated Circuit
(74LS374)
5 50 250
Integrated Circuit
(74LS244)
5 50 250
Logic Gate
(74LS32) 5 30 150
Ferric Chloride 5 40 200
TOTAL COST Php. 3, 765

Input Circuit

Components Quantity Unit Price Cost
Tack Switch 6 45 270
Biometric Fingerprint scanner 1 4,800 4,800
Wires 20 (meters) 5 (per meter) 100
Vinyl tiles 1 25 25
Mighty bond 2 10 20
Electrical Tape 1 20 20
TOTAL COST Php. 5,235

Output Circuit

Components Quantity Unit Price Cost
LED 4 25 100
Cooling Fan 1 139 139
CD ROM 1 0 0
Glue stick 2 6 12
Electrical Tape 1 20 20
TOTAL COST Php. 271

External Circuit
Components Quantity Unit Price Cost
Presensitized PCB
(4x6)
1 700 700
Wires 20 (meters) 5 (per meter) 100
Capacitor
7 5/20/25 110
Diode
6 10 60
DC Input jack female 1 25 25
Transistor 10 30/10 200
Resistor 17 1/3 31
TOTAL COST Php. 1,226

Physical Layout (Miniature)
Components Quantity Unit Price Cost
Fiber Glass 1 1,780
(65x50 inches) 1,780
Mighty Bond 3 55 165
Vinyl tiles 6 25 150
Plywood 1 300
(Single ply) 300
Rivet 20 3 60
Angle bar 1 35 35
Construction nail ¼ kl. 10 10
TOTAL COST Php. 2,500

Documentation

Components Quantity Unit Price Cost
Bond Paper 1 ream 200 200
Printer ink 4 100/125 475
Acetate 10pgs 10 100
Hard Bond 5 300 1500
TOTAL COST Php. 2,275

General Production Cost

Components Quantity Unit Price Cost
Transportation Approximated (Roxas/Iloilo) 2,120 2,120
Computer Unit 1 4000 4000
Electricity & water consumption 4 (months) 500 each 8,000
Food Approximated 3000 3,000
TOTAL COST Php. 17, 120

Summary of Overall Project Cost
Activity Cost
I/O Card Construction (Breadboard/PCB) 3,765
Input Circuit 5,235
Output Circuit 271
External Circuit 1,226
Physical Layout 2,500
Documentation 2,275
General Production 17,120
GRAND TOTAL Php. 32, 392.00