International Journal of Computer Applications (0975 – 8887) International Conference on Microelectronics, Circuits and Systems (MICRO-2014) 6 Micro-Controlled Automated Smart Tag-based Attendance Register (M. A. S. T. A. R) Abhishek Goswami 1 , Animesh Mukhopadhyay 2 , Subhabrata Sengupta 3 1, 2 Student, 3 Assistant Professor Institute of Engineering & Management, Salt Lake, Kolkata, India ABSTRACT In this paper of ours we have tried to put up hardware design, as to how it might be possible to implement an idea which is efficient, accurate and, it goes without mentioning, automated. We are trying to devise a monitoring system that tracks the entry and presence records of individuals inside a confined space. The Micro-controlled Automated Smart Tag-based Attendance Register (M.A.S.T.A.R) uses microcontrollers and laser sensors to detect the presence or entry of a person and in a triggered event stores the details of the person in form of a image or video. Every image or video segment has its own tag that uniquely identifies the new entrant and updates the pre-existing entrant records. Index Terms / Keywords: head-counter, microcontroller, attendance-checker, automated- monitoring, Atmega8 1. INTRODUCTION Dealing with a significantly large count of people in any sort of confined gathering , be it an office organisation, a symposium meet or a mere academic class room, becomes much more efficient and controllable within range if a count of people is provided and more so, if the count is followed by an attendance specification of the individual. In this proposed approach, we have tried to present our design and implementation of the microcontroller based system. The entire system has mainly three modules of which we are going to discuss one over here. The modules are (1) The Microcontroller Module, (2) The Capturing Module and lastly (3) The Database Module. Our chief focus in this paper would be to implement the Microcontroller Module that detects the entry or exit of an individual. In the Microcontroller module we use an AVRboard with on board programming configuration. We would first go through some related works in the field of Microcontrollers. Then moving on to the project at hand, we will see the devices used in the hardware module, the basic algorithm that it would follow and the pseudo codes that are to be implemented to detect the entry and exit using the ATMEGA8 component. In the rest of the paper we would have an idea of the penultimate and the final step of the project and its future scopes. 2. RELATED WORKS The project described here is a culmination of many streams of electronics and computer science. We will see applications along fields of microcontrollers, circuit designing, image/video processing, and database management throughout the three modules that we will be working on. So, based on all the topics covered here, not much work has been done. But still the motivation and the idea came from somedistantly related projects, as below. Theophilus Wellem and Bhudi Setiawan ofSatya Wacana Christian University, Salatiga, Indonesiaworked on a project "A Microcontroller- based Room Temperature Monitoring System" where they used Atmega 8535 and LM35 Temperature sensor to provide an automated solution.[4] 2012 showed the advent of another duo from MIT, Manipal , Nikhil Agarwal and G.Subramanya Nayak who came up with "Microcontroller based Home Security System with Remote Monitoring" where they devised home security system using IR sensors, temperature sensors and ATmega16.[5] Mohammad Syuhaimi, et.al. proposed GSM applications for home surveillance systems in their work “Developmentof camera and GSM interfacing system for home security surveillance" using camera and motion sensors to track down individual's positions modules.[1] AVR microcontrollers can be interfaced to mobile devices to automate the electrical system for a household including its security and surveillance. Christin John Thomas proposed such a work in his paper,"Intelligent Sensor Based Building Automation and Energy Management."ISSN: 2277 128X, August, 2013.[2] G. Song, Z. Wei, W. Zhang and A. Song deployed sensor nodes thus creating a mesh network which was accessible via Bluetooth and internet to create a complete home monitoring and control system as is described in their work “Design of a networked monitoring system for home automation”.[3] Prof. Inderpreet Kaur worked with simple LDRs, LEDs, ADC, Relays and Microcontroller 8051 to design an automated home security system. His work in "Microcontroller Based Home Automation System With Security” provided a simple yet effective approach to surveillance area.[6]. An approach was made by V. Sathya Narayanan et.al. in their paper "Design of Wireless Home automation and security system using PIC Microcontroller" [7] using PIC microcontrollers and ZigBee wireless communication module to control the entire domotics along with speech recognition and GSM technology. N. Sriskanthan, F. Tan, A. Karande.[8]in their work "Bluetooth based home automation system"applied Bluetooth technology and wireless communication to provide security surveillance from remote devices interfaced through microcontrollers. Jer-Vui Lee, Yea-Dat Chuah and Chin-Tin Chai proposed an idea of UART based home security systems in their paper “A Multilevel Home Security System (MHSS)”. [9] 3. PROBLEM DESCRIPTION The need for a monitoring system is never questionable. Individual records kept and managed manually, are not only tedious but also prone to errors and create loop holes which are detrimental in case of a good monitoring system.