Design of a GPS-based academic personnel clocking system

Abstract

Ensuring optimal productivity in the workplace is a major concern for employers of labour; hence the proposition of clocking solutions for employees in a bid to track their presence and punctuality at their duty posts. However, the peculiarity of the academic environment makes general methods of clocking unsuitable for lecturers. This paper presents design and implementation of a GPS-based clocking solution for academic personnel using a web App and an Android client. The web App; written in NodeJS and hosted on Heroku, in conjunction with the database (Mongo DB), registers and holds the schedule details of the lecturers. The android client which is installed on lecturers’ mobiles, works in synergy with the web App to accomplish clocking. This concept is reliant on GPS, thus, the lecturers’ mobiles require a clear view of the sky for successful clocking. The aspect of security can be improved upon with a few tweaks in the applications’ program codes. In all, the system utilizes existing and readily available resources to achieve clocking of academic personnel. Keywords: Global Positioning System (GPS), Telecommunication Science (TCS), Java, MongoDB, NavSTAR, NodeJS and clocking