Design of Intelligent Classroom Fingerprint Attendance System
Based on MCU
Haiyun Wu, Yunxi Ye, Yuan Liu and Wuji Huang
Engineering College, Tianjin Agricultural University, Jijing Rode, Tianjin, China
Keywords: Attendance instrument, STM32 MCU, Fingerprint identification technology, SMS module, SD card storage.
Abstract: As a sign arrival system of work, fingerprint attendance system aims to automate the attendance procedure
of an educational institution using fingerprint technology. A hand-held device is designed to mark the
attendance without the intervention of teacher. After students made to place their fingers over the sensor
before the class, the corresponding names are shown in green. Student attendance would be recorded to the
SD card storage module. The absence name of student would not only be updated to computer using a micro
usb-cable, but also be sent to the teacher in charge or sent to the corresponding parents or both in mobile
phone by SMS Module if the faculty pressed the button. Therefore, the intelligent fingerprint attendance
instrument in the classroom greatly improves the efficiency of the teacher's class registration.
1 INTRODUCTION
The attendance system is to maintain the normal
working order, improve the efficiency and
discipline, and make the employees observe the
work time and labor discipline consciously. The
traditional attendance registration which means
register with artificial paper registration has many
shortcomings, such as omission, misstatement etc.
With the rapid development of the electronic
industry, the electronic attendance machine quickly
replace the paper-based manual registration, and is
widely used in various management departments, for
example, the management of the company's gate.
Fingerprint is the unique biological information
of each person, which cannot be copied(Krithika,
L.B., 2017). Therefore, fingerprint identification
technology is an ideal identity recognition
technology. Automated fingerprint identification not
only has many unique information security
advantages, but also has high practicability,
feasibility and convenience. In recent years,
intelligent products have developed rapidly.
Fingerprint technology also has many applications in
the registration of attendance, such as the company's
fingerprint attendance instrument, which can be
registered according to each person's fingerprint
information (Ong, K. S., 2014). Such a fixed identity
could avoid the shortcoming of looking for someone
to replace.
In the traditional classroom, teacher records the
attendance of students by naming usually. The
teacher prints a name list of students and calls these
names one by one. There are many shortcomings in
this traditional way of registration, for example,
teachers need to take time to call the names and
register the attendance, paper registration form is
easy to lose, and final statistics is complicated. Each
student's fingerprints are different in class. If
fingerprint technology is applied to class, there will
be no help attendance, and students just press
fingerprints on the intelligent attendance instrument.
However, at present, in many colleges,
fingerprint attendance technology has not been
widely used (Zainal, N. I., 2015). On the one hand,
the cost of attendance equipment based on
fingerprint technology is relatively high. On the
other hand, employees of each company are
relatively fixed. Different from the company
attendance, the turnover of college classroom
students is large, and students in the same classroom
are different at different time usually(Li, Q.Y.,
2017). It is necessary to update the personnel
fingerprint bank in time （Marwan, A.Z., 2016）.
Therefore, a class intelligent fingerprint attendance
system, which STM32F103ZET6 microcontroller
was used as the main chip was designed in this paper.
Faculty can give the head teacher a timely feedback,
662
Wu, H., Ye, Y., Liu, Y. and Huang, W.
Design of Intelligent Classroom Fingerprint Attendance System Based on MCU.
In 3rd International Conference on Electromechanical Control Technology and Transportation (ICECTT 2018), pages 662-666
ISBN: 978-989-758-312-4
Copyright © 2018 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved

which is convenient for the management of the head
teacher. If the teacher presses a button, the
intelligent attendance instrument can send the
message to the teacher in charge of the class by
SMS. It is also possible to send a student's absence
to their parents. The use of SD card storage
technology is to store this class of information in
order to sum up the statistics at the end of the period
and give right comments to the attendance.
The intelligent fingerprint attendance instrument
in the classroom can greatly reduce the workload of
the teachers and improve the efficiency of the work.
Before the class, the teacher can turn on the
computer to arrange the class information while the
students sign in according to their fingerprints. At
the same time, the use of low cost microcontroller as
the main control chip, reduce the cost of the use of
instruments, which can be further popularized in
Colleges and universities.
The main contents of this paper are as follows:
(1) To build the minimum system, so that the
STM32F103ZET6 MCU can work properly.
(2) To display the class list, the course and the
teacher of the class, and the time of teaching on the
TFT-LCD LCD
(3) To realize the fingerprint storage and
fingerprint identification of the AS608 fingerprint
module;
(4) Implementation of SIM900A SMS module to
send SMS.
2 PROPOSED SYSTEM
The proposed system comprises five sections which
is showed in figure 1: Microcontroller module,
AS608 fingerprint module, SIM900A module,
Graphic Liquid Crystal Display(GLCD), and SD
card storage module. Microcontroller which controls
the entire system in this design is STM32F103ZET6.
AS608 fingerprint module is the heart of the system.
The device prototype model is showed in figure 2.
Fingerprint attendance device is a hand-held
device which can be carried to the classroom. In the
first class, students have to register their fingerprint
by selecting roll number and placing their fingers.
From second class, they can mark their attendance.
Faculty can take the device to his room after class
hour and it can be connected to the computer. The
attendance details can be updated using a micro usb-
cable. The attendance system is mainly to achieve
the function to record student attendance and storage
to the SD memory card. Information of absence
students can be sent to the class teacher and the
parents hand in the corresponding machine.
Messages of the name of the student, the course, the
faculty, and the class time are included in the text.
Figure 1: System Architecture
（a）
（b）
Figure 2: The device prototype model, a: internal diagram,
b: outside view drawing
3 HARDWARE SYSTEM DESIGN
3.1 MCU Selected
The intelligent classroom attendance system adopts
STM32F103ZET6 microcontroller as the main
control chip, which is produced by Italian
Semiconductor Company for the application of high
performance, low cost and low power consumption.
The chip is powerful and rich in resources.
Design of Intelligent Classroom Fingerprint Attendance System Based on MCU
663

In addition to meet the basic requirements of
classroom intelligent attendance instrument, but also
there is a large number of surplus I/O and other
resources for the selected chip. Thus the classroom
attendance intelligent instrument can be used for the
corresponding expansion and upgrade according to
the upgrading of products or the actual situation, and
has JTAG and SWD download port, convenient
program download and debug.
3.2 TFT-LCD
TFT-LCD liquid crystal display is used to displays
the class student list, the specific course and the
teacher and the time of teaching use by intelligent
fingerprint attendance instrument. TFT-LCD is a
thin film transistor liquid crystal display. Different
form simple passive matrix of TN-LCD, STN-LCD,
it in every pixel LCD screen are arranged on a thin
film transistor (TFT), which can effectively
overcome the crosstalk non gating, to display the
static characteristic and the LCD screen is
independent of the number of scan lines, thus greatly
improving the image quality.
3.3 AS608 optical fingerprint
identification module
The fingerprint module used in the system is the
AS608 optical fingerprint identification module
which got from a well-known fingerprint
identification chip technology Co., Ltd. Hangzhou
company (Synochip). The chip has a built-in DSP
operation unit, which integrates the fingerprint
recognition algorithm, and can efficiently and
quickly collect images and identify fingerprint
features. The module is equipped with serial port
and usb communication interface. Users do not need
to study complex image processing and fingerprint
recognition algorithm. Only by simple serial port
and usb can control module according to
communication protocol. Its function realization and
flow chart are as follows:
(1) Logging in to a template with two
fingerprints in the flash fingerprint library.
(2) Reading the field fingerprint from the sensor
and search the fingerprint from the fingerprint
library.
3.4 SIM900A SMS module
The SIM900A SMS module is used to send
message. RS232 and LVTTL serial port
communization were supported by the SIM900A
SMS module (i.e. 3.3V/5V support system). With
the advantage of wide scope of work in support of
5V~24V, the module can be easily connected with
other products to realize the implementation of SMS
and GPRS data transmission and other functions.
The schematic diagram of the SIM900A SMS
module is shown in Figure 3.
Figure 3: SIM900A SMS module diagram
ICECTT 2018 - 3rd International Conference on Electromechanical Control Technology and Transportation
664

3.5 SD memory card
Students' attendance data are stored into the SD
memory card by the class intelligent fingerprint
attendance instrument. SD card is a new generation
of semiconductor memory devices based on flash
memory, because of its small volume, high data
transmission speed, hot swap and other excellent
characteristics. In the classroom intelligent
fingerprint attendance checking system, the
STM32F103ZET6 interface is directly driven by the
SDIO interface of the microcontroller, the 4 bit
mode, the highest communication speed can reach
24 MHz, and the maximum per second can transmit
data 12 M bytes.
4 SOFTWARE DESIGN
The control flow chart of the class intelligent
fingerprint attendance system is shown in Figure 4.
After starting the machine, the system was
initialized, and the class student list, the specific
course and the teacher and the time of teaching was
displayed on the TFT-LCD. At this point, the
initialization was completed, followed by the student
to sign in by fingerprint. If a student signed in
according to the fingerprint, the name of the TFT-
LCD display was green, indicating that the student
has arrived. The name on the list was not the same.
The SD memory card stored the attendance data.
Finally, the attendance system was waited for the
teacher's instruction. The absence name of student
would be sent to the teacher in charge or sent to the
corresponding parents or both if the faculty pressed
the key.
Figure 4: Flow chart of system
5 CONCLUSIONS
The attendance system is to maintain the normal
working order of the unit, improve the efficiency
and discipline. It can also be used to make the
employees observe the work time and labor
discipline consciously. The intelligent fingerprint
attendance instrument in the classroom mainly uses
fingerprint technology, GSM communication
technology, SD card storage technology and so on.
Before class, students sign in and sign in. The
teacher can send the message to the teacher in
charge of the class by SMS. It is also possible to
send a student's absence to their parents. The
intelligent attendance instrument of the classroom is
convenient and quick to record the attendance of
students in class, reduce the time of teacher's class
name, and improve the efficiency of the teachers. In
the present market, there are few systems. If this
system can be popularized well, the market prospect
is better.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This research was funded by the Research project of
Tianjin Municipal Education Committee
（ 2017KJ180 ） , and the Innovation and
Entrepreneurship Training Reform Model Projects
of Tianjin Agricultural University (20170416).
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