Question about student ID's, barcode scanners and attendance (1 Viewer)

[KMaCK8848]

I am NOT a programer by any stretch. I'm a rank novice, very pedestrian user of MS Office, and need to learn some things for work. I run an after-school youth program for high school students. My issue is an accurate way to track attendance of students. We have MS ACCESS 2010 on our computers at work.

On any given day we may see between 30 to 50 students, so this is a small operation - - and the reason I'm adverse to buying fancy "custom" software and hardware "systems". Because students come and go and vary over time, we may see 100 kids in a given week, but in the past 2 years of operation, we have had well over 250 students come through our program, with some returning at various times.

What I would like is to be able to
1) Make a simple ID card with student photos and a unique ID # that can be ...
2) Scanned by a simple barcode system.
2b) Actually two barcode swipes ... one swipe at the front door / main entrance, and a 2nd swipe by a hand held bar code in the various four classrooms to be sure the student is not only in the building, but also went to the correct class.
3) That the input of that information dumps into our ACCESS database so we can track student attendance, and ...
3b) provide reports out to school counselors / principals of the numerous highs schools that our students come from, to let them know which of their kids are actively attending our program.

My questions are ...
A. Can this be done with ACCESS?
B. Would it be better to do this with EXCEL?
C. If ACCESS can handle it, which types of bar code devices would be the best choice for us to purchase? (We would need a total of five barcode scanners. One at the front desk, and one in each of our four classrooms.)

The system would need to be expandable seeing that this could easily be doubled in terms of classrooms and students within the next year or so. We are currently just 2 years old.

I do not know computer programer "talk", so you got to keep it simple for me.

 

[mdlueck]

My questions are ...
C. If ACCESS can handle it, which types of bar code devices would be the best choice for us to purchase?

A bar code scanner which can read the bar codes you have.

I developed a project involving bar codes. A Symbol USB attached scanner is in use. There were NO drivers / software needed to be installed for use with Windows XP.

Once attached, scanning a bar code would send the bar code value to the active application as keyboard input. So it was a simple matter to select the proper database form field, zap the bar code, and instantly the bar code number is in the Access form field.

YMMV

 

[Lightwave]

Yes it is entirely possible you are however going to need some clever SQL to cover problems like gating...

Students will swipe in multiple times by accidents and things like that. You can get round this by gating times. EG a gate whereby after initial swipe anything within 5 minutes is ignored (although read).

I've done timing systems for athletics races using access and it will work.

The code that I have however becomes exponentially slower for numbers above 2000 because it needs to re-calculate everything using all the times even if there is one change.

You may as well do it in Access as it is no easier in Excel.

Be warned though either in Access or Excel this is quite an advanced project and the coding you will need requires someone that knows both coding and a bit of algebraic mathematics.

 

[KMaCK8848]

to Lightwave,

Thank you for your reply and encouragement.

I doubt seriously that we will ever have 2,000 students at any one time.

And thanks A LOT about the tip about gating (accidental multiple swipes at the door). Is the gating problem what your referring to when you say we will need someone with advanced coding and algebraic skills? If so, we're sunk. We're a small non-profit trying to manage with what we have out the box.

Again, thanks. Even if I may have to scrap the barcode door swipe idea.

KMaCK8848

 

[Lightwave]

KMack

It's tricky to advise with complete confidence. The kind of coding on the bar code side of things is probably at the harder end of database development and would be something generally a more advanced user would attempt. Saying that if you are a quick study there is nothing like having to make something work to get it up and running.

In the first instance it might be less risky just to try and design a register system in access that allows you to produce the reports you need. This is more manageable and once you've done it you'll be in a much better position to understand how you might move it forward to include a barcode automatic scanning system. The good thing is that if you don't get the database up and running all the bar code stuff wouldn't be needed anyway so although a bit backward in development terms it is less financially risky.

FYI
A timing system for athletics races would generally have

A chip file
This contains a list of codes that are produced by the chips you would have barcode file.

A competitor file
Contains a list of what competitors are in the race (you want to substitute students here)

A Junction File
This records what students have been allocated to which barcodes or competitors to chips (its the same principle)

You have the additonal complication that each is in a different course and a number of other items that would mean you would potentially issue a new barcode for each individual when they take a new course.

You see it quickly becomes quite complicated. Plus with the barcoding you are going to have some networking going on with some mechanism for auto import into the database followed by calculations.

Honestly start with database and worry about the barcoding later.

With regard to gating.

What you do is you get your list of times and students so you have

Tom 08:56
Tom 08:57
Jane 09:00
Bill 09:15
Jane 11:00
Bill 11:00
Tom 11:00
Jane 11:01

In this example you can see Tom scanned in twice at the beginning and you know that it is very unlikely that he stayed for one minute and then left and came back at 11 similarly Jane scanned twice at 11.

What a professional system would do is the following any time based system will have the same Pattern

Take all times
Sort first by competitor then by time order
Select out each individual eg Tom's times
Create dummy second list exact copy of first.
Starting from the first time in the first list of individual add gate time to first time and compare against second list.
If second list time is less than time plus gate time discard record..
Continue through all records in first list.
Repeat for each competitor.

Once you've done that its fairly simple to calculate how long someone attended for simply take their first time from their second within the resulting list.

But then that's in a system where you want to record duration of attendance you don't need that but you probably will have to do gating to get rid of multiple reads anyway otherwise there will have to be a manual correction facility.

You might not realise it but this is the process you automatically go through in your own head when you look at a list like the times above. The way the human mind works we do that kind of pattern recognition extremely intuitively. Computers have to be instructed verbatim. The gate time referred to in the above post is a period of time within which you would want to prevent people making multiple reads. In our athletic races I typically choose 5 minutes. Our equipment is very sensitive and a chip may read a dozen times for a competitor going from one side of the matt to the other. Although automatic streaming wouldn't probably be an issue with barcoding I bet you would get students multiple presenting their cards.

You would probably need a manual check at some point anyway as people will inevitably forget cards / power will go down etc.

 

[KMaCK8848]

Thanks ...

I think I'll just get everything else in ACCESS and forget about the barcode side of things. Seems if if we have a workable system for inputting information, making queries and reports manually for the small number of students we have, that will be sufficient. If we need to upgrade to barcodes and scanners at a later date, at least we will have the fundamentals in place.

Thanks for the info and encouragement.

KMaCK8848
Cleveland OH USA