International Conference on Recent Advances in Mechanical Engineering and Interdisciplinary Developments [ICRAMID - 2014]

An Intelligent and Efficient Wireless

Classroom Management System
A.Srinivasan*
Assistant Professor/Dept of ECE,
SRC,SASTRA University,
Kumbakonam, India
asrinivasan78@yahoo.com

S.Swaminathan
Assistant Professor/Dept of ECE,
SRC,SASTRA University,
Kumbakonam, India
s.swami@src.sastra.edumail

K.Ramasamy
Assistant Professor/Dept of ECE,
SRC,SASTRA University,
Kumbakonam, India
ramas.hari@src.sastra.edu

Keywords: Wireless Management, Wi-Fi, Client-server networking, Raspberry pi

Abstract.
The aim of this paper is to propose works by analysing, the data sent from
the admin through Wi-Fi and provides acknowledgement to the admin through the same system used
for communication. The reason why Wi-Fi has been ,used for broad-casting the data is that todays
conventional educational institutions have Wi-Fi facility in their campus for providing internet
connectivity to the students. Broad-casting is done by sending the data to all the access points by
accessing the broadcast ID of the network in which this system is to be implemented. Hence the same
Wi-Fi system can be used to broadcast the message from administrator to classrooms and vice-versa.
Introduction
In the current scenario, development in the area of education and especially educational
institutions, have attained a rapid peak. There are large number of colleges, schools and institutions,
which follows different methodology in handling classes, maintaining classroom environment and
other infrastructures. Eventually more number of students gets, their admissions into such
institutions, every year and hence the in-take ratio has increased that too in the recent years. Hence
managing the classrooms has been a problem in educational institutions. One of the issues in the
present day educational institutional system is passing circular to classroom for transferring
information to students, either regarding academics or not relating with academics. Maintaining a
separate log for attendance has also become an old trend which involves the usage of an attendance.
This is a tedious process which requires manpower to deliver information and getting
acknowledgement in the form of signature from the staffs and the same for the purpose of attendance
too.
2.Existing System
The existing system is the conventional circular system in which the circular
having information is sent to the classrooms via an office-assistant. He personally is supposed to take
the circular to all the classrooms and has to request all the staff to convey the information in the
circular to all the students. After this, a formal signature is said to be affixed by the staff in order that
the admin to understand that the information is conveyed by the respective staffs in their classrooms.
This is a tedious and time consuming process. Attendance for the students is also to be marked in the
class sessions which in turn consumes more time.
3.Proposed System
In the proposed system that we propose works by analysing, the data sent
from the admin through Wi-Fi and provides acknowledgement to the admin through the casting the
data is that todays conventional educational institutions have Wi-Fi facility in their campus for
providing internet connectivity to the students. Broad-casting is done by sending the data to all the
access points by accessing the broadcast ID of the network in which this system is going to be
implemented. Hence the same Wi-Fi system can be used to broadcast the message from admin to
classrooms and vice-versa. A kit at the client side, with Interface for all types of displays to display
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the data received and a block that comprises of a camera for security purpose and for recording the
class sessions.
4.Generalized Blockdiagram

Here the display block is designed in such a way that any other types of display devices can also
be interfaced. This reduces the display system design cost. To replace the old methodology of signing
the circular; here we introduce the method of digitally acknowledging the data received by using
RFID reader. Faculties and students are provided with a RFID card instead of a typical ID card
where the same card is used by the faculties for acknowledging the circular received and by the
students for enrolling their attendance as well.
5.Raspberry- Pi Module

Fig.1 Raspberry-Pi PCB top view

The receiver kit used at the client side is Raspberry- Pi Module. It is completely an ARM11
S3C2440 based microcomputer which is used in UK to teach basics of computer science in schools.
This is a Credit-card sized single board computer and a product of Raspberry Pi foundation (UK).
ARM11-76JZF-S is the processor version used in this module. The Raspberry Pi has
a Broadcom BCM2835 system on chip (SOC), which includes an ARM1176JZF-S 700
MHz processor. The firmware includes a number of "Turbo" modes so that the user can attempt over
clocking, up-to 1 GHz temporarily. A Video-Core IV GPU and originally shipped with 256
megabytes of RAM, later upgraded to 512MB. It does not include a built-in hard disk or solid-state
drive, but uses an SD card for booting and long-term storage. It is a special purpose computer that
can be implemented on any user specific applications.
6.Functional Blocks
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Fig.3 Functional block diagram of Raspberry-pi

6.1 RAM
This module contains an in-built SDRAM of 512 MB. By default, 128 MB is allocated to the
GPU and 128 MB to CPU. On the first 256 MB release model B (and Model A), we can have three
different splits. . The default split was 192 MB (CPU RAM), which is sufficient for standalone 1080p
video decoding, or for simple 3D, but mostly both cannot be run together. 224 MB was for only
Linux with just a 1080p frame buffer, and usually fails for any video or 3D.
6.2 General Purpose I/O (GPIO)
There are 54 general-purpose I/O (GPIO) lines split into two banks. All GPIO pins have at least
two alternative functions within BCM. The alternate functions are usually peripheral IO and a single
peripheral may appear in each bank. This is to allow flexibility on the choice of IO voltage.
6.3.USB
The integrated USB hub is fully compliant with the USB 2.0 specification and can connect to
a USB host as a Full-Speed Hub or as a Full-/High-Speed Hub. The hub can support Low-Speed as
well as Full-Speed downstream devices on all of the enabled downstream ports. High-Speed services
can also be provided if operating as a High-Speed hub. For each downstream facing port, we have
dedicated Transaction Translator (TT) is available.
6.4 Ethernet
The 10/100 Ethernet controller faciliates an integrated Ethernet MAC and PHY which are
fully IEEE 802.3 10BASE-T and 802.3u 100BASE-TX compliant. The 10/100 Ethernet controller is
also supporting number of power management wakeup features, including Magic Packet, Wake
on LAN and Link Status Change. We can program these wake up events to initiate a USB remote
wakeup. The 10/100 Ethernet PHY integrates an IEEE 802.3 physical layer for twisted pair Ethernet
applications.
6.5 Memory
A slot for SD or SDHC card is present which can be used for inserting SD cards of capacity
4GB min to maximum of 16GB. The main usage of this storage device is to insist on the concept that
SD card image that could be loaded onto an SD card for having a preliminary operating system.
6.6 RFID Reader
Radio-frequency identification (RFID) is the implementation of a wireless non-contact system
in which the audio-frequency electromagnetic fields are used to transfer data from a tag attached to
an object. The main application of this is for the purposes of automatic identification and tracking.
This type of authentication methodology is generally used these days security systems. Besides this,
RFID is used in many other places. RFID is used in this project at the receiver section for
authentication. A 125 KHz RFID reader is used for identifying staff members and acknowledgement
and also is used by the students to enroll their attendance.

7.Wi-Fi System
Wireless network system implementation in educational institutions plays a vital role in todays era. It
has several advantages when compared with wired systems architecture. Wireless architecture, in
general has very high efficiency.
Educational institutions still have the system of passing circular
between classrooms in order that the information, news, or announcements to be sent to the
student/staff community from the admin. Also marking attendance during class sessions have become
a time consuming process. This system requires man power for the work to be done. Hence it
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International Conference on Recent Advances in Mechanical Engineering and Interdisciplinary Developments [ICRAMID - 2014]

consumes more time. To reduce the manpower and to save the time, we go for WI-FI system where,
the information reaches the student/staff community (classroom/staffroom) as soon as it is uploaded
in the server by the admin. Through this a fast, effective and most powerful means of data
communication can be done.
8. Camera
Students who are enrolling their attendance in the classroom can also enroll others
attendance by using the concerned persons RFID tag. To avoid this, a security camera is used to
monitor the persons such that to ensure individuals use their tag and they enroll only their attendance.
Also daily class sessions can be recorded for future reference by the students, who had missed the
classes
9.SD Card
All units these SD card are clocked by an internal clock generator. The interface driver unit
synchronizes the DAT and CMD signals from external CLK to the internal used clock signal. The
card is controlled by the six line SD card interface containing the signals: CMD, CLK, DAT0~DAT3.
For the identification of the SD card in a stack of SD card, a card identification register (CID) and a
relative and address register (RCA) is foreseen. An additional register contain different types of
operation parameter. This register is alled (CSD). The communication using the SD card lines to
access either the memory field or the register is defined by the SD card standard.
Data sent by the
receiver

Receiver is
ON

Data reached

Store the value in Database

Receiver

Acknowledgement

Wait For the Ackowledgement

Fig.4 Flow chart describing system operation

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Stop the process and Wait For Boot

Resend the Data

International Conference on Recent Advances in Mechanical Engineering and Interdisciplinary Developments [ICRAMID - 2014]

10 System Description
The system consists of mainly a server at the administrator side and client at the
classroom side. The communication between server and client takes place through the Wi-Fi
network, which is present in the institution. A typical Wi-Fi network will have access points in all the
floors or all the buildings with a particular distance separation. This is to ensure the availability of
Wi-Fi signal all around the campus and within range. This system reduces the design costs and
eliminates the need for a design of separate network for communication. A client server topology is
established between admin and classroom that enhances safe and secured communication
methodology. The server is either connected to w-lan network or else the server itself is made a wlan server. This is done to enable proper communication between end to end systems in the network.
In the classroom environment, the kit based on raspberry-pi is placed.
11 Results

Fig.5 General schematic of the kit

Fig.6 Ready to use front end interface at server side

Fig.7 Data sent from server

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Fig.8

Data received at client

Conclusion
This system derives a new result and stands strong in the result obtained and acts as a
boon to embedded system developers and programmers who can use this, as if they were the one to
discover this system. Having many real time applications, that too especially in the field of front end
user interface developments and video processing applications, this will be a ready to use and
problem solving tool ever and ever.

Reference
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Wireless Sensor Network for Surveillance using a Multichannel Multi-Radio Approach, Issue:
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Wi-Fi positioning overview Lingxia Liao, Kai Lin, Xiaofei Wang, Xiaorong Lai, Son T.
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Singal..,Wireless communicationsTata MC Graw Hill Education, 2010

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John catroulis,OReilly.., Designing Embedded Hardware, 2005.

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Weis, Stephen A (2007).., RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) principles and

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Finkenzeller, Kalus.., RFID Handbook: Fundamentals and applications in contactless smart

cards and identification (2nd edition)- 2003.

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John R Vacca.., Computer and information security handbook, Morgan Kaufmann 2009.

[11]

ARM1136JF-S and ARM1136J-S Technical Reference Manual

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