NorthStar provides an automated student attendance tracking solution using RFID and GPS technologies. RFID tags on students are read by sensors at school gates to log entry and exit times, which are sent to cloud servers to check against rules. GPS tracks student locations on buses. The system alerts authorities if students are not accounted for. At the end of terms, comprehensive attendance reports can be generated to reduce administrative burden. NorthStar is scalable for large schools and its notifications are fast and reliable.

1. Child Attendance
The Business Challenge Introduction
A typical school consists of hundreds to thousands of Teachers in schools across India (& the world) often
children who enter the leave the school through its gates manually mark the absence or presence of a child in
every day. the school & class by calling out the child’s name &
Children who attend school need to be automatically expecting a response.
marked as present when they enter the school through This method is time-consuming & error-prone, & is
the school’s gates. When they leave the school through difficult to track the movements of a child across a
its gates, they need to be marked as “departed” school year.
School authorities & the parents of these children are An integrated system is needed that can automatically
concerned about their safety, & need to know of the track the entry of the child into the school (or indeed,
entry & exit of children through the gates & the times of into a classroom) & the exit of the child from the school
those movements. or classroom.
If the child fails to enter the school gates or classroom
by a specified time, or fails to exit the school gates or
The Client classroom by a specified time, the school authorities &
The client is a leading international school in the Northern parents need to be alerted.
region of India. The school sprawls over several acres of
At the end of the semester or year, both the school
land & has 3 gates through which its 3500+ children enter
authorities & parents need to be informed of the
& exit every day.
attendance of the child, both in the school, & in various
Security guards at each gate manually check the IDs of the classrooms.
children who enter & leave.

2. Solution About NorthStar
NorthStar provides the ideal solution to the challenge. A combination
of RFID & GPS allows NorthStar to track the location, movement, entry NorthStar is an integrated, wed-based
& exit of school children. tracking & monitoring solution that
ensures the safety & security of
While school children are on their way to school, GPS devices either
vehicles, people & assets while they
on their person (school bags, badges, belts) or in their school bus track
travel. It is backed by SOA-based
their location or the location of the school bus. This information is
technologies & powerful tools that
reported to NorthStar every 5 seconds, which in turn, checks millions
include the powerful PostgreSQL &
of business rules in real time to check whether the child is safe or not.
PostGIS servers, Apache Tomcat,
Children also carry smartcard (RFID) badges on their person or in their Spring & Java from Sun.
bags. When a child reaches the school gates, powerful RFID readers
installed at the gates read the RFID tags, the information off them & With dozens of enterprise customers &
the direction that the child is walking toward (in or out of the school). thousands of users across the country,
This information is transmitted via LAN or GPRS to NorthStar’s cloud- NorthStar is India’s most mature, time-
based servers. NorthStar, in turn, checks millions of business rules tested, robust & reliable safety, well-
every second to check a plethora of conditions. being, identification & tracking system.
It has been used in well-known
The RFID tags are pre-programmed to contain unique information
enterprises & schools all over India.
pertaining to the child, such as name, class, blood group, address &
contact information. The RFID tags can be attached to the child’s ID This is a "peace-of-mind solution" that
badge, belt buckle, school bag, pencil box or uniform, & can be worn takes into account concerns of users, a
accordingly.
When the child walks toward the school gates – either from inside the NorthStar is created by Magnasoft
school or from outside, NorthStar’s powerful long-range RFID readers Consulting India Pvt. Ltd. Incorporated
detect the presence of the RFID tag either on the child or in in year 2000, Magnasoft combines the
somewhere in the bag. This information is instantly sent to NorthStar’s power of GIS technology with extensive
Amazon cloud-based servers, which do the following: subject matter expertise to implement
powerful spatial technology solutions
a. Correlate the entry/exit of the child with the child’s presence on
that integrate seamlessly with the IT
the bus,
framework of organizations. From data
b. Check for multiple, contiguous entries & exits,
capture & conversion to application
c. Ensure that the number of entries match the number of exits, development, from enterprise
d. Match the times of entry/exit with school authorized times integration to Photogrammetry,
If any of these – & more – rules are violated, NorthStar instantly alerts Magnasoft covers the complete gamut
the school authorities & parents by SMS, web alerts & email. This of spatial systems.
ensures the safety & security of children.
Similar entry & exit detection systems can be set up at the entrances Contact
of classrooms, halls, cafeterias & other areas of the school that need
to be monitored. This takes the burden of attendance off teachers, & W: http://northstar.ws
saves them precious time to teach.
E: northstar@magnasoft.com
O, At the end of the semester or school year, school authorities can pull
up an attendance record/ report of the child, both from the P: 1-800-1-200-COP
perspective of entering/ leaving the school & from the perspective of (1-800-1-200-267)
entering/ leaving classrooms. This reduces the administrative burden
M: 0-99-80-200-885
on the school.
NorthStar is scalable enough to handle hundreds of concurrent RFID
tags/ children entering & leaving the school & classrooms.
NorthStar’s web interface is available throughout school hours & is
extremely simple to use & operate.
Its SMS notification mechanism is robust, extremely fast (under 45
seconds delivery of SMSs) & is not blocked by TRAI’s DND/spam filters.
Magnasoft Consulting India Pvt. Ltd
NorthStar’s RFID tags & readers are powerful enough to be read at 33/1 Lalbagh Road,
long distances through clothing, bags, water bodies & magnetic Bangalore 560 027, India
materials. W: http://www.magnasoft.com
P: +91 (80) 4346-6000
F: +91 (80) 2222-7580