Classroom Presence System, Funding
The $700 one-door pilot, the funding proposal spreadsheet, and what each piece of equipment in the room is for.
Funding & pilot equipment
The $700 one-door pilot, the full funding proposal, and what each piece of equipment in the room is for.
$700 one-door pilot
A contactless doorway reader and a face-check camera for one classroom: students walk in and are logged automatically, with no roll call and no tapping a card. Ordered, in the room
| Hardware subtotal | $591.67 |
| Contingency (10%) | $59.17 |
| Total | $650.84 |
| Funding request (rounded up to the nearest $50) | $700.00 |
Why it's worth it: taking attendance costs a teacher about 5 minutes a day, roughly 15 hours of paid time a year (about $1,190 per teacher). Across Del Norte's ~103 teachers that is about $123,000 a year. At the base case the pilot pays for itself in about 105 school days.
Funding proposal spreadsheet
Every item with quantity, price, store link, and order status.
Open the spreadsheetPilot Equipment (in the room)
The $700 one-door pilot (about $592 of hardware plus a 10% contingency) has been ordered, and the equipment is in the classroom. If you are picking up this project, this is what each piece is for. Prices, store links, and order status are in the spreadsheet above.
| Item | What it's for | Qty |
|---|---|---|
| Rainy UHF RFID HAT (5.5 dBi antenna) | The doorway reader. Snaps onto the Raspberry Pi and reads laptop tags from a few feet away, so students don't tap anything. | 1 |
| DS3231 real-time clock | Keeps the Pi's clock accurate after it loses power. Minutes-present numbers are wrong if timestamps drift. | 1 (4-pack, spares included) |
| On-metal UHF laptop tags | The stickers for real laptops. Ordinary UHF tags stop working on a metal lid; these are built for metal. | 40 |
| On-metal tag sample pack (5 sizes) | For testing which tag size reads best on real laptop lids before tagging the whole class. | 1 |
| Practice UHF tags | Cheap tags for testing read range and angles. Use these, not the on-metal tags, for experiments. | 100 |
| Self-destructive tamper UHF tags | Break if someone peels them off, so a tag can't be handed to a friend. Paper tags, so they may not read well on metal. | 40 |
| Light stands, 2-pack | One holds the reader and antenna at the door, the other holds the face-check camera. No drilling into school walls. | 1 pack |
| Heavy-duty adhesive strips | Attach the antenna and reader to the stands and the door frame without screws. | 8 sets |
| Logitech MX Brio 4K webcam | The face-check camera. Plugs into the Mac mini and compares each student's face with their registered photo, so a tag handed to a friend gets caught. | 1 |
| Elgato Key Light Neo + Neo Stand | Even, soft light on faces at the door, the cheapest way to make face matching more accurate. The stand holds the light at face height. | 1 each |
| Reusable cable ties | Keep the camera cable and power cords tidy and out of the doorway so no one trips. | 100-pack |