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IoT Based Safety System for School Children: A Contactless Access Control for
Post Covid School Conveyance

Conference Paper · May 2021

DOI: 10.1109/INCET51464.2021.9456314

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 2021 2nd International Conference for Emerging Technology (INCET)
Belgaum, India. May 21-23, 2021

IoT Based Safety System for School Children: A

Contactless Access Control for Post Covid School
Conveyance
2021 2nd International Conference for Emerging Technology (INCET) | 978-1-7281-7029-9/20/$31.00 ©2021 IEEE | DOI: 10.1109/INCET51464.2021.9456314

Bindu P.V. Khalifa Darwish Al-Hanawi Amjad Mohammed Al-Abri

Engineering Department Engineering Department Engineering Department
University of Technology and Applied University of Technology and Applied University of Technology and Applied
Sciences- Al Mussana Sciences- Al Mussana Sciences- Al Mussana
Mussana,Sultanate of Oman Mussana, Sultanate of Oman Mussana, Sultanate of Oman
bindup2005@gmail.com 56S168392@act.edu.om 56S168385@act.edu.om

Vanitha Mahadevan
Engineering Department
University of Technology and Applied
Sciences- Al Mussana
Mussana, Sultanate of Oman
vaniarun13@gmail.com

Abstract— Children’s safety during daily transportation to
and from the school is of supreme importance during and after
this pandemic. Nowadays, school conveyance makes use of
biometric-based access control, which may aggravate the
spread of Covid-19. A complete security system that informs
the parents and teachers about the kid’s school bus boarding
and gets off details can enhance the safety of our kids during
their school conveyance. This project demonstrates an IOT
based RFID card reader system to give detailed information
about the boarding and get off each student to the class teacher
and their parents. Each student is allocated a separate RFID
card. Once the student enters her conveyance reader range, the
authorized student is allowed to occupy her seat. Student’s
entry and exit details are updated on the school server and
messaged to the parents. A software counter with LCD inform
the bus driver about the number of kids on the bus and thus
solves the problem of leaving the students inside the school bus
unknowingly.
Keywords— Internet of Things, access control, RFID system,
school children’s safety.
I. INTRODUCTION
Millions of schoolchildren opt for school buses as the
mode of transportation for going to school. Ensuring the
safety of our kids during their Transport to and from school
is very important after this pandemic. Forgetting kids in the
school bus and leaving them in the parked conveyance has
become an issue nowadays. Monitoring and control of the
entry and exit of the kids in the bus manually by the bus
driver is not an efficient and dependable system. Security of
our kids can be ensured to some extend by precisely
identifying each student; recording their entry and exit time
in the school conveyance and timely contact their parents. A
biometric authorization system is an option for security
measures in the school campuses and school conveyances.
But since the system needs physical contact of the students
with the reading machine, it may take more time for
authorization and a risk due to covid-19 spread. One of the
solutions to this problem is a smart safety management
system based on RFID technology [4,6,9,10].
Identifying the absence of kids in the school bus and
passing information to the parents in a manual system takes
more time. In this paper, the IoT based monitoring system
provides a detailed report of student’s attendance to the
concerned teacher. Google sheet is used for providing this
service. Utilizing the recent advances in information
technology along with the tremendous advancement in the
electronic communication sector helps us to implement a
sophisticated security system for kids. In this smart world, a
digital record of each student in a school is an ordinary
matter, and keep the parents in touch also a usual thing. So,
we make use of this digital record called data bank, which
stores the basic facts regarding students and staff in the
school. This paper presents an IoT- based smart security
system for school children in their school conveyance,
especially after the pandemic.
II. LITERATURE SURVEY
A thorough survey of this topic reveals that several
studies have been carried out in this sector. Kassim et.al [1]
demonstrated an RFID based attendance monitoring system
for replacing manual attendance monitoring system in
educational institutions. The proposed system tracked the
student’s attendance using the RFID reader-tag system.
Besides, this system facilitated the online record
maintenance system to track the student’s attendance
anytime anywhere.
Prakash et.al [5] described an Arduino based security
system for school children. The described system consists of
two components. The student ID with RFID tag constitutes
the first component and RFID reader installed in the school
campus belongs to the second component. When the student
enters the school, the RFID reader scans her ID card and the
name of the student along with the time of entry is displayed.
An RTC module was interfaced to the microcontroller for
time notifications. GPS module attached to the system

978-1-7281-7029-9/21/$31.00 ©2021 IEEE 1

Authorized licensed use limited to: HCT Musnaa. Downloaded on June 30,2021 at 08:04:22 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
identifies the student location. Once the student enters the
campus, details collected from the RFID reader, along with
the GPS data is sent to the parent using GSM.
Ning et.al [6] described an RFID - based intelligent
safety management system for school children. Using RFID
technology, they designed a system for monitoring the
school gate, schoolroom, and other places on the school
campus. The proposed system includes a number of RFID
readers and tags. Each student keeps the RFID tag either in
his school uniform, school badge, or school bag. The reader
captures the details and sent to the security management
system through a communication gateway.
Nataraj et.al [7] proposed a system for monitoring the
entry and exit of school children from the school bus using
GSM and RFID technology. Parents are getting details on the
status of their wards through messages sent using GSM
technology.
Hayder et.al [8] proposed an attendance system based on
RaspberryPi. The system comprised of terminal units, and a
central computer. The terminal device is composed of
Raspberry pi, screen monitor, RFID, each user's transponder
card, and GSM board. The central unit called the hub of the
network is responsible for gathering all the information from
the terminal units, displaying it, and special analysis to make
a decision on those whose absence crosses the threshold line.
Leela et.al [9] presented an RFID based system to update
parents regarding the status of their wards during their school
time. The system includes a GPS module that provides the
kid’s location details. This system consists of an ID card with
an RFID/NFC system and a child safety device(CSD). The
CSD is the arrangement of GSM / GPS and the wireless data
transfer scheme of RFID. The device transfers information
through GSM.
III. METHODOLOGY
The proposed system aims to enhance the security of our
school children by providing the parents with dynamic
information about their kids. This system provides a
standalone setup that updates student’s details on the school
website and informs parents about their ward’s status. Fig.1
shows the block diagram representation of the proposed
system.
Fig. 1. Block diagram representation of the system
Authorized licensed use limited to: HCT Musnaa. Downloaded on June 30,2021 at 08:04:22 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
The microcontroller used in the system is NodeMCU.
NodeMCU is an open-source firmware particularly designed
for IoT based applications [14,16]. The communication
between the parents and the school management is
established using google sheet and the Blynk app. Google
Sheets allows users to create and edit spreadsheets while
collaborating with other people at the same time. Blynk is an
application in smartphones that provides easy control over
the Internet of things (IoT)[17,19]. The Blynk app is used to
send messages to the parents. Radio Frequency Identification
(RFID) denotes a wireless system that uses radiofrequency
waves to transfer data. It consists of two components: RFID
tags and readers [2,12]. The RFID reader is accomplished to
acquire details stored inside the RFID tags [3,4,15,20]. A
distinctive ID or sequence number is assigned to each RFID
tag. Radio waves are used to transfer information between
the RFID tag and the RFID reader. Based on the frequency
range used for communication, RFID tags are classified as
low, high and ultra-high frequency tags [1,11,13]. Based on
the information retrieved from the tag, the RFID reader
provides information regarding the entry or exit time of each
student on the school bus. Whenever the RFID reader reads a
particular student tag, these details are updated in the
databank also. Thus the school authorities get the
consolidated details of all kids on the school bus.
Software-based counting unit installed in the bus do the
counting of kids on the bus and display the same for
notifying the driver. Kids boarding the bus lead to the
increment of the count and the exit of the kids decrements
the count. The count details help the driver to ensure that
nobody remains on the bus before parking the bus.
The process flow in the proposed system is given in
fig.2.The heart of this system is a microcontroller interfaced
with an RFID card reader. The RFID card reader acquires
details while the tag comes closer to it. The databank server
contains details of each student. The microcontroller reads
information from the RFID reader. If the code match with
stored data, it sends a notification to the Blynk app and does
the email and, the child is allowed to occupy his/her seat. If
the code does not match with stored data, it displays a
message indicating the not authorized person and sends
information to the authorities. During the trip towards the
school, after authorizing each child, the counter increments
its count by one.
While reaching school, the driver will have an idea about
the total number of kids on the school bus. As each child gets
off from the school bus, the count will be decremented by
one. Before leaving the bus for parking, the driver can verify
whether the count has reached zero or not. If the count is
non-zero, that indicates the presence of children on the
school bus. This eliminates the chance of leaving kids
unattended on the school bus. Separate sheets were used for
sensor data capture and data transmission. Sheet 1 is used for
acquiring the sensor data, and for forwarding the data the
comparison result in sheet 2. Sheet 2 display the data (TIME,
Card UID, Student name and Student Number) and send e-
mails to parents.
 Fig. 5. RFID reader module

The RFID reader captures the card details and the entry
and exit details of the kids on the school conveyance are
informed the parents using the Blynk app. Fig.6 shows the
message sent to the parent through the Blynk app after the
authorization of the student. Fig.7 shows the student entry
and the exit details updated in the google sheet for the
Fig. 2. Program flow-chart reference of the school authorities.

Fig. 3. Circuit connection

The connection details of the system are shown in fig. 3.

The serial input (SS) for SPI communication is connected to
the D2 of the microcontroller, serial clock pin to the D5
Master out slave in pin for SPI communication to D7,
MISO/SCL/Tx to the D6 and the power pins to the
corresponding pins of the microcontroller.

IV. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Fig. 6. Blynk notification received in the mobile
The breadboard level implementation of the system is
shown in fig.4. The RFID reader captures the details from
the tag placed near to it. The microcontroller unit process this
data and required control and processing signals are initiated.
We designed RFID reader module as a cube with length
and width of 9 cm and height of 3 cm respectively as shown
in fig.5.
Fig. 7. Web- based student’s attendance details

Fig. 4. Circuit implementation Fig. 8. E-mail to the parent

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Fig. 9. Count display for the driver
Fig.8 shows the e-mail sent to the parent and fig.9 shows
the display of student count in the bus for the reference of the
driver. The obtained results were accurate and the delay in
message delivery and google update was negligible.
V. CONCLUSION
In order to reinforce the safety measures of school
children during their way to school, this paper proposes a
smart security management system using RFID and IoT
technology. The proposed system utilizes wireless data
transfer using RFID to authorize the entry and exit of the
school children on their conveyance. The proposed system
helps the timely information transfer between parents and
school administration and thus avoids any possible
undesirable incidence during their travel. The software
counter in association with the microcontroller system
monitors the entry and exit of the kids in the conveyance and
displays the number of students on the bus. This helps the
driver to ensure that all students have step-down before
leaving the bus in the parking area. The message sent
through the application, helps the parents to track their kids
on their way to school. The details entered in the cloud help
the school authority to keep track of the daily attendance
system in an efficient way.
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