Session-Aware ESP32-RFID Attendance Prototype with Cloud Synchronization for Smart Campus Applications

Abstract

Low-cost RFID attendance systems are attractive for smart-campus automation, yet many implementations overstate novelty while underreporting security and deployment limits. This paper presents an applied prototype study of an ESP32-RFID attendance system integrated with Firebase Realtime Database and a role-based web dashboard. The proposed improvement is a session-aware event model in which each accepted attendance record is bound to class, date, terminal, and session token before cloud submission. This design strengthens application-layer traceability, reduces cross-session ambiguity, and prepares the system for multi-terminal and hybrid-verification extensions. Prototype evaluation covered 39 validation scenarios across LCD responses, RFID reading behavior, repeated-scan handling, weak-connectivity conditions, and dashboard functions. All configured scenarios completed successfully in the bench-top prototype environment. The system therefore demonstrates practical feasibility as a low-cost reference implementation for smart-campus attendance with real-time synchronization. However, the present design still relies on UID-based RFID identification and should not be interpreted as a high-assurance anti-fraud solution. A comparative discussion against manual attendance, baseline UID-only RFID systems, and simple biometric alternatives is provided together with a deployment roadmap toward PCB-based hardware, multi-terminal operation, and stronger second-factor verification.