RFID Based Smart Attendance System

Why did we decide to make it?

Attendance in University is generally paper based which may sometimes cause errors. Taking attendance manually consumes more time. So, In this project we have designed RFID Based Attendance System using Arduino and RFID MFRC522 Module. In this system, each student is issued an RFID card as their id card and their attendance is marked when they touch their card to RFID reader.

What is RFID?

RFID stands for Radio Frequency Identification.Here digital data stored in RFID tags are captured by a reader via radio waves.

Working principle of RFID

Components used in the project

1. Arduino Uno Board

This is a microcontroller board based on the Microchip ATmega328P. This was used as the brain of the circuit.

2. RFID MFRC522 Module

This was the transmission module used for RFID communication. This RFID reader communicates at 13.56 MHz. Uses SPI communication.

3. SD card module

Used to transfer data to and from SD card. Used to fulfil the data logging part. Uses SPI communication to transfer data between the microcontroller and sd card.

4. RTC module

RTC stands for Real Time Clock. This is power by a battery. Therefore, even when the whole device is switched off we can still get the accurate time from the RTC.

5. LCD display (20 x 4) with i2c lcd module

Display information based on the RFID tag read. Display the number of students in the library at a given moment.

Components connection with arduino

1) RFID MFRC522

Pin Wiring to Arduino Uno

SDA Digital 10

SCK Digital 13

MOSI Digital 11

MISO Digital 12

IRQ unconnected

GND GND

RST Digital 9

3.3V 3.3V

Caution: You must power this device to 3.3V!

2) Real Time Clock (RTC) Module (DS1307 and DS3231)

Pin Wiring to Arduino Uno

SCL A5

SDA A4

VCC 5V

GND GND

If you’re using other Arduino board rather than the uno, chek out what are their SCL and SDA pins.

Nano: SDA (A4); SCL(A5)

MEGA: SDA (20); SCL(21)

Leonardo: SDA (20); SCL(21)

3) SD Card module

SD card module Wiring to Arduino Uno Wiring to Arduino Mega

VCC 3.3V or 5V 3.3V or 5V

CS 4 53

MOSI 11 51

CLK 13 52

MISO 12 50

GND GND GND

4) I2C module

I2C Character LCD Arduino

GND GND

VCC 5 V

SDA A4

SDL A5

CODE

You can get the source code of this project from our GitHub page. Here is the GitHub link for that.