Mobile Monitoring and Inquiry System Using Fingerprint Biometrics and SMS Technology

This paper described a mobile monitoring and inquiry system using the fingerprint biometrics and Short Message Service (SMS) technology. It was specifically developed for the monitoring of preschoolers ’ attendance during their schooling, which is beneficial to the working parents. The system adopted the Rational Unified Process (RUP), Visual C#.Net 2008 and MySQL Server 5.1 database and software development kit (SDK). The system was designed to automatically sends an alert SMS to the parents/guardians whenever the pupils loggedin/logged-out in the system. Likewise, it could receive an SMS inquiry and sent an SMS reply to the parents/guardians when no alert message was received after the expected time of loggedin/logged-out of the pupil. All the text messages used a predefined content of 160 characters or less, without graphics and are local texting only. Results of the system evaluation showed that the fingerprint scanning records an average of 93.48 % and 93.81 % accuracy for the login and logout respectively. The average time of sending an alert message to the parents/guardians is 27.20 s while 23.08 s for the reply of an SMS inquiry. The mobile monitoring and inquiry system using the fingerprint biometrics and SMS technology is convenient, economical and reliable method of monitoring, identifying and/or verifying users since it no longer requires identity cards or passwords memorization. Thus, the system could be used by the other levels of pupils depending on their monitoring needs. However, there is a need for some innovation like designing a multiple detection and recognition using a high resolution of camera for easy use of login and logout in the system.