CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

Background of the Study

Technology is the application of scientific knowledge that aims human life

or sometimes phrased, to change and manipulate human environment. A science
or knowledge put into practical use to solve problems or develop useful tools. It is
a branch of knowledge that deal with the invention and use of technical means and
their interrelation with life, engineering, applied science, and pure science.
(Random House. INC 2019)

A mobile app or mobile application is a computer program or software

application specifically for use on wireless computing devices, such as
smartphones, tablets, and watch. It is designed with consideration for the demands
of the devices and to take advantage of any specialized capabilities they have.
(Techtarget 1999-2019)

Academe is the academic environment or community; it is also the

community and academically environment within the institution of higher
education. It is a part of society especially universities that is connected with
academics. (HarperCollins Publishers)

Attendance checker is a system that is used to call students names to check

and monitor their attendance. Reader with attendance, students can scan their ID’s
to verify the identity of user, it can accurately scan ID’s.

There are so many things that technology gave us. One of the contributions
that technology has given us is the mobile phones. The development of mobile
innovations has turned handheld gadgets a p art of individuals' day by day life,
especially in entertainment and communication. Android is an operating system
that is primarily designed for touch screen mobile devices like smart phone and
tablet computers.
 Checking the attendance is a time-consuming and tedious chore. The
Instructors will call the name of the students and the students will say “here” for
the Instructor will know that they are present for the class (Dobson, 2015)

Using a biometric (fingerprint sensor) system with Global Positioning

System (GPS). The researchers conduct and developed their project with the use
of latest trends of technology. Android is one of the best technologies to use. For
most people in the world has a mobile phone, the researchers take advantage of
it. (Chauhan, 2015)

The researchers are aware that people hate to endure the inconvenience
of the way of checking attendance. And yet the conventional and traditional mode
of attendance management system (AMS) leads lot of paperwork and it is hard to
maintain for a long period of time and these days, smart phones, are outfitted with
location information receiver, RFID reader, camera, and other sensors for
environmental awareness. These can give rich and intuitive mixed media learning
content for educational reason.

Using a piece of paper or laptop is the standard way to check the attendance
of the students. And this way the checking of attendance in a class is not easy and
takes too much time for Instructors and students.

That’s why we the developers think of another way to create this attendance
system. Using the mobile computing and mobile based application processing to
make the attendance system more reliable for students and instructors and to
inform parents by SMS notification.

Objectives of the Study

The main objective of this study aims to develop an android application that
can monitor the attendance of the students and to be reliable for the professors to
take the attendance of every student.

Specifically, it aimed to:

 1. To keep track of the attendance in a portable way using android mobile
devices
2. Provide a record of each students who attends on class
3. Provide SMS notification to the parents
4. Generate reports of attendance

Scope and Limitation of the Study

The development of the project is composed of an Android Application. It is an

Android Based system with the capability to check and monitor the attendance of
the students per section. It provides attendance reports that has been done by the
students in a week. This system provides the functionality of sending messages
and reminder using SMS. The messages and reminders will be sent to the parents
for them to know if their children are regularly attending class and what is
happening to the student. Performing the recording and updating the records are
managed by the admin. The study covers the formulation of the proposed system.

Definition of Terms

This key terms in the study are given the following operational definitions:

Academe – the academic environment or community.

Attendance Checker – a system that is used to call students name to check their
attendance.

Android – used as an operating system to run the mobile application

Biometric – relating to or involving the application of statistical analysis to

biological data.

Database – refers to a storage of data to be retrieved when checking attendance

of students.
Global Positioning System – is a constellation of approximately 30 well-spaced
satellites that orbit the Earth and make it possible for people with ground receivers
to pinpoint their geographic location.

Mobile app or Mobile application – is a computer program or software

application specifically for use on wireless computing devices, such as
smartphones, tablets, and watch.

RFID Reader – is device used to gather information from an RFID tag, which is
used to track individual objects.

Smart Phones – a mobile phone that performs many of the functions of a

computer, typically having a touchscreen interface, internet access, and operating
system.

Smart reader – a provided hardware that is used to identify the data of the
students with the help of an ID.

SMS (Short Message System) – is a way of sending short written messages from
one mobile phone to another.

System – is a collection of components that works together to perform a specific

task.

Technology – is the application of scientific knowledge that aims human life or

sometimes phrased, to change and manipulate human environment.
 CHAPTER 2

REVIEW OF RELATED SYSTEMS

Attendance Systems

The attendance system is the way to keep track of employee hours. It is a

system that you use to document the time employee work and the time the take
off. It is made to be used to monitor the attendance and movement of employees
within their working hours. And the attendance system has database, where the
data will be stored. And the database will be used to get the information of any
students and instructors. As indicated in the study of Codling by utilizing the
attendance system’s database capacity, it can store up to 550 employee data
(Codling, 2015).

Attendance is for keeping records and to track the number of students

present in schools, colleges or in any organization. It is very important strand in
maintaining discipline among employees in an organization and imparting quality
education in schools, colleges. According to (Dregde, 2015) they utilize a web
based hosted time and attendance system on their thesis studies. It is a web-based
hosted time and attendance system including full features that can support labor
management, including time keeping, scheduling, accruals, budgets, incidents,
and more. They call it Attendance on Demand. Organizations use it as a service,
with month to month per-worker billing, exporting every labor data into any payroll
system virtually.

Radio Frequency Identification System (RFID) attendance Monitoring

In this system, each student is issued an RFID tag. Controlling unit is in the
institute. Whenever the card is placed near the reader, it will take the attendance
and the student info will display that is connected on android device. As stated by
(Rodrigo, 2015). The system is mainly compromise by mobile phones which is
used as RFID reader. RFID tags which are embedded to the student’s ID cars and
server machine which is likely computer this system records student’s attendance
to an attendance database server.

In most of the colleges and schools, attendance is recorded manually –

such a process consumes lots of time. In this proposed system, attendance system
is implemented by “RFID”, the conventional method of taking attendance by calling
names or signing on paper is very time consuming and insecure, hence inefficient.
According to (Dobson, 2015). Checking the attendance is a time-consuming and
tedious chore. The Instructors will call the name of the students and the students
will say “here” for the Instructor will know that they are present for the class.

Attendance management using RFID and GSM is quite simple. It assigns a

unique card for each Student. A Student places the RFID card on the card Reader.
The Reader reads the Student details listed on their I.D. According to (Hamid,
2010) tracks of the students using Radio Frequency Identification System (RFID)
The system embedded integrated Radio Frequency circuits in Student Identity
Cards for the purpose of automated tracking.

The system has ability to uniquely identify each person based on their RFID
tag type of ID card make the process of taking the attendance easier and reliable
for instructors as compared to conventional method, students only need to place
their ID card on the reader and their attendance will be taken immediately. (Kizildag
and Basar, 2018) proposed a system of automated attendance monitoring using
Identity Card and Barcode Scanners. The authors tried to solve the problem of
manual computation of attendance records by providing a system that uses
barcode readers to scan Student ID embedded as barcodes on plastic ID cards .

Attendance system using RFID uses RFID tags which is unique for each
person. A person can simply mark the attendance by swiping the RFID card on the
RFID reader and with regards to the attendance made the message to the parents
and informing them that their children is present at class. According to (Praveen,
et al, 2015) Usage of RFID and IoT they presented an attendance management
system. It can be accessed anywhere and record data in the cloud and can send
multiple SMS to several smartphones.
 Using this system is to simplify attendance recorder system by using RFID
technology. This will require a product, which has can distinguishing different
person. (FARPAT, S., VYAS, D., & CHAVAN, S., 2015) With the use of RFID
technology, they will take the attendance of the students and proposed an
automatic computing system in classrooms.

Attendance monitoring systems are also developed using biometric

system as a mode of authentication and marking the attendance of the students.
Authors in (Shoewu, O. and O.A. Idowu et al, 2012) designed and implemented a
system that uses fingerprints to mark the attendance and generate the reports at
the end of the semester. RFID system has also been used to develop an
attendance and monitoring system. RFID system basically consists of two
components: the first one consists of tags and readers, and the second is a
computer software or application.

Attendance Monitoring Systems Using Biometrics

Biometrics allows a person to be identified and authenticated based on a

set of recognizable and verifiable data that is unique and specific in a person.
Authentication is the process of comparing data for the person’s characteristics to
the person’s template in order to recognize similarity, it consists of determining the
resemblance of the person. It can be an image of their face or the image of their
fingerprint. A biometric (fingerprint recording) system is there way of monitoring
and checking the attendance. It will be used to mark the attendance of students
and teachers while a Global Positioning System (GPS) will track food grains for
the Mid-Day Meal Scheme, Minister of State for HRD D Purandeshwari told HT.
As for the researchers, they developed their project with the use of the latest trends
of technology within our generation. Android is one of the most efficient
technologies to use. Almost everyone in the world has this kind of technology to
use for their personal purposes like gaming, entertainment, education and etc. The
researchers take this advantage and grab the opportunity to use this kind of
technology in their studies. It would be a great help to our fellow students and to
our beloved professor to have an easy way of checking the attendance of their
classes and take advantage of using the latest trends of technology. (Chauhan,
2015).

According to (Jiexun et al., 2018), Biometrics has been used in biological

studies, for the collection, synthesis, analysis and management of quantitative data
on biological communities. Another form of delivering a safe and convenient way
to authenticate people has been enabled with the integration of fingerprint scanner
inti smart cards, the cards can also be tailored to support access physical and
online identity verification services. Technology methods developed to solve the
problem of identity management includes; Possession of physical authorization
(such as keycards), Possession of knowledge (password, PIN etc.), and
Biometrics. Biometrics is based on confirming the identity of an individual beyond
reasonable doubt. (Ratha, 2018). They presented an iris recognition-based
attendance system. That can record data and predefined E-mail address. Khatun
et al, 2015). According to (Soewito et al., 2015). The system is time-consuming as
it used finger print technology. The system is able to collect data but can’t generate
.pdf or .xlsx file

Attendance systems have used electronic tags, barcoded badges, magnetic

strip cards, biometrics (vein reader, hand geometry, fingerprint or facial) and touch
screens in place of paper cards. (Kadry et al, 2016) Proposed a wireless
attendance management system using an individual’s iris, which is unique, for
authentication. In this system, a scanner is used to scan the iris and automatically
log in the person. Unlike fingerprints, the iris is more preserved from the external
environment. However, both fingerprint- and iris-recognition-based approaches
require extra devices and scanners, usually connected to a server.

Attendance systems try to overcome the aforementioned problems by

ensuring students are directly interacting with the device and that the device is in
the particular class in which the student should be According to (Salh, et. al, 2015)
Moreover, biometric technologies capitalize upon unique, permanent, and
scannable human characteristics that is unique and no other person shares. This
characteristic should also remain the same overtimes. All biometric devices take a
number of measurements from an individual then digitally process the result of
these measurements and save this representation of the individual’s traits into a
template. Templates are then stored in a database associated with the device or
in a smartcard given to the individual.

Mobile-Based Attendance Monitoring System

The mobile attendance system has been built to eliminate the time and
effort wasted in taking attendances in schools and colleges and to keep track and
maintain information about students also easy to deliver the report about the
students to the concern parents. According to (Avinaash et al, 2017) It can update
the employee of their attendance regularly. It also has the details if the employee
is a regular to the organization and every detail of the employee.

Using the mobile-based attendance system the instructors can easily see
the reports and detail of every students when they’re attending or not attending the
class and they also see on how often the students attending the class. (Jessenth,
et al, 2017) It can store details of the students and the professors can view the
attendance of the students. The professors then can inform the students that
they’re not attending the class often.

The smart phone-based attendance system which can overcome the

manually attendance. The proposed system uses mobile applications used by
instructors and students; the mobile requires a RFID as a mechanism for
registering attendance. According to (Noor et al, 2015) developed a system for the
student’s attendance automation. In this system, each student has an ID assigning
a barcode which is read by the smartphone application.
 In this method of taking attendance using instructor's mobile telephone has
been presented in this paper, which is paperless, quick, and accurate. An
application software installed in the instructor's mobile device. (Mohammad et al,
2017) In this system, one student can carry the ID of the others which will mislead
the attendance system. they presented a mobile application for time and
attendance system. It uses the real time location of the user. So, the officials can
know if the instructors are in the school premise or not.

The mobile operating system (MOS) place a key role in the development of
mobile application since the application for one MOS is not compatible with other
MOS. Therefore, before developing the mobile application for a particular
application the MOS must be considered and the application must be developed
for the same. (K. Akhila et al, 2018) Proposed an android-based mobile application
for student attendance tracking system. It offers reliability, time saving, and it is
easy to control and to take the attendance using android mobile phones. It can
reduce the efforts of the staff members towards attendance maintenance. It is an
efficient and user-friendly android mobile application for attendance monitoring.
 CHAPTER 3

TECHNICAL BACKGROUND

Technicality of the Study

The Android Based Attendance Application using Smart Reader use an

android phone. The system requires an android phone with the OS version of 8.0
(Oreo Version) to run. Moreover, it is recommended that an experienced user use
the system to avoid data loss and system malfunction. The system is developed in
Android Studio, it supports the feature of JAVA. Developers uses interactive user
experience for a rapid user understanding. The system works when the hardware’s
and software interact, it is composed of Smart reader, Identification Cards, Mobile
phones, and software such as the system. It also uses Short Message Service
(SMS) to keep in touch of the user’s parents and to monitor the students to attend
the class regularly. The systems use SQLite for the database.

Details of the Technologies Used

Android Studio is an integrated development environment (IDE), it was used

to design the system and to make every function responsive. The RFID uses
electromagnetic fields to detect the track tags attached to objects, so it is used to
get the information of the students with the use of ID. XAMPP server is used for
the database of our system. And the last one is an Android mobile phone, this is
used to load and run the system application. SQLite is a C-language library that
implements a small, fast, self-contained, high reliability, full-featured, SQL
Database engine. SQLite is the most used database engine in the world. SQLite
is built into all Mobile phones and most computers and comes bundled inside
countless other applications. Smart Card Readers are used with smart cards which
are plastic type technology card with a built-in chip used for electronic processes
including personal identification, access control, authentication, and financial
transactions.

How the System Works

With our research it leads us to develop an android-base attendance system

using a Smart Reader. To use our system, the user needs an android mobile phone
with the version of 8.0(Oreo Version) or lower and a RFID/Smart Reader. If the
user log-in as an admin, it will redirect to the admin page then the user will be able
to control the data inside the database. If the user log-in as an instructor, the
system will redirect to the attendance main page. The user will now be able to use
the RFID that will be used to get the attendance of the students, the user will also
be able to see the student’s list with just selecting the subject and the schedule.

The researchers used Business Process Model as shown in Figure 1 for

developing the system. First, the researchers gathered information on the internet
for the requirements needed for the development of the system. The design was
decided by every researcher to use the android studio.

In implementing the system, the researchers used the Pre-processor

Hypertext Protocol (PHP) as the development language, Notepad++ as code editor
and XAMPP server as the Database.
Figure 1. Business Process Model
 Figure 2 shows the data flow of the system. The system lets students tap
their I.D to RFID and direct to the attendance systems to read the student
information. In the attendance systems it loads all the information and operations
of students in the system. The instructor has the authority to access, manage and
view in the application.

Figure 2. Data Flow Diagram

 Figure 3 show context diagram. It shows the boundary between the
proposed system and its entities. The administrator is able to manage and view
registered students. The Instructors is able to log in/log out and view its log also
they can view the reports of the attendance. The student’s parents or guardian will
receive the SMS notification.

Figure 3. Context Diagram

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