A government PU college student in Puttur has developed an innovative face-recognition-based attendance system that not only records student attendance within seconds but also sends an instant message on Telegram app to parents every time their child arrives at school.
Arun Kumar V, a second PUC student at Government Pre-University College, Kombettu in Puttur taluk, created the system using his knowledge from the IT stream under the National Skills Qualifications Framework (NSQF), which he has been studying since Class 9, stated a report by The New Indian Express.
Inspired by his learnings at the Atal Tinkering Lab - innovation workspaces established in schools across India by the Atal Innovation Mission (AIM), a flagship initiative of NITI Aayog, Arun spent three months designing and building the system with guidance from his Information Technology (IT) teacher, Ashlesh Kumar.
The device uses a web camera to recognise students’ faces as they arrive at school. Once identified, the student’s name appears on a display screen, and a message is immediately sent to their parent’s phone. This message includes name, date, time, and confirmation of attendance. Before using the system, each student must be registered by entering their name, class, section, parent’s mobile number, and five photographs taken from different angles.
Every day at 11 am, the system generates a PDF report of the attendance, which is sent to the Head Master’s phone via Telegram app. At the same time, students who have not been marked present are registered as absent, and their parents receive an alert. After that point, the system does not allow further attendance entries for the day. The attendance log resets every night to prepare for the next day.
The device has the capacity to store information for 500 students and takes just 1-2 seconds to record each entry. In schools, one device can handle up to 200 students. The current version, which is still in the experimental stage, was built using low-cost equipment, bringing the total cost to approximately Rs 13,000. However, this cost may increase for larger-scale production.
The system is powered by a Raspberry Pi motherboard, and includes other parts to hold the components. For full functionality, the device needs to be connected to the internet via Wi-Fi, according to the report by The New Indian Express.
Arun and his mentor, Ashlesh, believe this system can bring transparency and speed to attendance tracking, while also keeping parents informed in real time. Arun said that with further changes, his model can be adopted in more schools across the state.
