Inspiration
Both students and teachers are annoyed by the need to mark attendance before starting an excercise. Another issue is leaving lights on when not needed.
What it does
Our solution enables students to mark their attendance electronically simply by swiping their ID card across card reader and their presence is noted. Students can log in to the system offering an attendance tracking overview, on the other hand, teachers have ability to track their various classes.
How we built it
Pivotal device is created using ESP32's wireless connection abilities and data from card reader and light sensor is sent through WiFi connection via MQTT protocol secured with user authorization. Web application is run under node.js server. All functional parts are run as a Docker container on DigitalOcean platform.
Challenges we ran into
As we strive to make our solution secure as well as functional, we struggled for a bit securing MQTT protocol with user authentication, but eventually figured it out. Another issue occured when trying to send MQTT publish from browser with the culprit being complex port security and communication configuration.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We are quite happy with the integration of various services together after countless tough sessions and calls. We ourselves could appreciate such solution and its deployment to classrooms.
What we learned
Each and every one of us learned new technical skills. Moreover our cooperation and teamwork skills enhanced, as well as ability to work under time pressure got better.
What's next for ClassMate
We are keen on to improve our solution even more. To provide better user experience, we debate on integration with university modular system and light wiring in classrooms to automatically turn the lights off when needed. A simple ML model can be introduced to determine the for active lights.
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