ABSTRACT
The challenges of the manual method of taking attendance include difficulty in keeping the attendance list over a long period of time, time wasting during writing or signing, students forgetting to sign and students signing illegally for an absentee. This manual process has a lot of problems which may affect the productivity and management of schools. The aim of this project is to develop a radio frequency identification attendance system. The RFID attendance system utilises a microcontroller as the processor needed to operate the embedded system. An RFID reader that transmits and receives radio waves in order to communicate with RFID cards. A timing module that supplies current date and time information and a display screen to show infom1ation recorded and power supply that supplies energy to work. The microcontroller is programmed on the Arduino IDE interface using C language. The RFID reader, real time clock, LCD screen and the programmed microcontroller, are all set up on a breadboard and interconnected with each other to ensure they work accurately. Interconnections are done using jumper wires and a multi meter was used to test every component to verify if they are in good conditions. When this is ensured, all components are moved to the development board and are soldered. The soldered components are then coupled together in a casing. The RFID reader module reads infonnation from the cards and sends the data to the Microcontroller. The Microcontroller then analyses the information to determine card data and status. Simultaneously, the rnicrocontroller reads time and date infonnation from the Real Time Clock (RTC) to log the time and date of the card Scan. All the data is then displayed on the LCD Display and sent through the USB port to the attached PC for permanent record of the information. The result gotten shows that the developed system is efficient and can be implemented as a form of attendance taking. This project provides a convenient method of attendance using RFID tags. An IP camera can be integrated into this system in the future to monitor the actions like buddy-punching wherein a person cheats by scanning for another person.