Design and development of a smart attendance management system with Bluetooth low energy beacons

Tracking of attendance is a ubiquitous task in many institutions and during organised events. This, along with subsequent management of collected data can be a cumbersome activity that requires significant time and effort, from all involved parties. Tracking and managing student attendance during lectures and exams is an especially important instance of that task. Automated attendance management systems devised in the literature differ in applied technological solutions and features. However, many of these lack some features that would make them particularly useful for the task of student attendance management. This paper proposes the design of an automatic system tailored for the tracking and management of student attendance data. The design incorporates three main components that interact to deliver a seamless user experience. The key element is the utilisation of simple beacons, which make the system cost-effective and easy to use. Combining them with a mobile platform and a web service enables versatile attendance tracking. Periodic detection of the nearby beacons with authenticated server-side logic makes the proposed design unique in terms of addressing common attendance tracking issues. Also, the design is open for future integration of sophisticated data analysis modules.