Smart Card Based Canteen Automation

Introduction:

The practice of printing Canteen Coupons and manually maintaining a record of its usage is a tedious and time consuming task. Innumerable delays occur right from printing them, re-ordering them from time to time, keep a register of issue and usage, and finally calculate the monthly consumption of each employee and deduct the same from their salary. Contractors or employees of your organization often take advantages of this lacuna in your existing system. Just imagine the loss and reoccurring cost involved in this practice and calculate this loss for months and years together.

In various industries canteen facility is provided to the employees. For this purpose coupons are provided to the employees. They need to provide coupon at canteen while taking food. This system has many disadvantages such as coupons need to be kept carefully, limited food is available for each coupon, keeping records of coupons is tedious and errors may occur.

To eliminate these problems we are developing following system

Block Diagram:

The system consists of micro controller, LCD, Card reader/writer and buzzer. We will be using Smart Cards as they are low cost and easily available. This system will be available with every waiter in the canteen. When a person has to order something he will provide the smart card to the waiter who will enter the card in the system. The LCD will display the balance amount in the card. The person can order anything he wants in the menu and the amount will be deducted from the card. If low balance condition occurs the buzzer will be sounded. In such condition the person can make payment to the waiter who will then recharge the smart card there itself.

Moreover in companies we can use the same smart card which they use for attendance for canteen use as well thereby reducing the need to carry extra cards.

Advantages:

1. Simple operations with easy installation procedure
2. Small & compact design with sleek aesthetics
3. No hassles of cash and coupon management, directly linked to payroll software
4. Value added application with usage of same employee ID card
5. Low cost and high price performance ratio
6. Even if smart card is lost the details will be stored in PC.
7. Paper Saving.

Disadvantages:

1. Will have to carry smart card all the time.
2. High initial costing.

Text Books:

1. Muhammad Ali Mazidi –“THE 8051 MICROCONTROLLER AND EMBEDDED SYSTEMS”, Pearson education,
2. Ayala- “INTRODUCTION TO 8051 MICROCONTROLLER”

Website:

1. www.howstuffworks.com
2. www.dnatechindia.com

Magazines:

1. Electronics for you
2. Electrikindia