A Collaborative IoT School Bus Monitoring System

In recent years, it’s common for students, particularly in elementary school, to use school buses for transportation. However, in specific regions, the school attendance system faces several issues, including reliance on manual roll calls using paper, teachers encountering difficulties in identifying, and deficiency in providing immediate notifications to teachers and parents regarding student movements. In order to tackle these obstacles, some smart management systems on buses were born. However, the products either have a closed design or are outdated with current technology and electronic components on the market. This work gives a solution named BusMate - a collaborative IoT system between schools and parents for taking attendance of Elementary student on school buses. Teachers are equipped with mobile black boxes that feature Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), fingerprint recognition technology, and Global Positioning System (GPS) technology. Data is transmitted via the bus’s Wifi system or Mobile Hotspot of teacher’s phone to a real-time database used on Google Firebase. The system can accurately record student attendance as they enter and leave from the bus. The parents and teachers can have notifications and monitor through a mobile application. This solution, BusMate has an open source hardware and code design, the solution can be easily customized to suit many schools.