This project aims at making smart office automation accessible to anyone with this easy-to-do and affordable IoT time clock. This project can be done in around 1 hour and is made so that people with no knowledge of tech can still try it out and enjoy automating their office.
It's also a good core project for your own adaptation if you want to monitor your pet's ins and outs or if you want to start building your smart home or smart office system.
This project is based on our Prota OS, a free OS based on Raspberry Pi and dedicated to the smart home automation.
Components
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Raspberry Pi v2 or v3
($20~$35) // for RPi 2, you will need a WiFi dongle
Time clocks were mainly used at the end of the 19th century and throughout the 20th century as a way to monitor precisely the attendance of employees in big companies and factories. Back then, it was often a paper card that the employee would slip into a machine that pinched the right time box or print it. Its concept has, of course, evolved a lot since then and most models now integrate RF or biometric technologies.
Those new machines are pretty expensive (at least $100) so we propose you to create your own fun time clock machine to monitor your employees (if you’re a CEO/HR) for less than $40 (again!) but which you can also adapt to any other use (monitor your pet's in and outs through its pet door for instance).
FEATURES
With this project, you will be able to create a time clock that can:
Detect motion when employee arrives
Snap them
Receive the snapshot via Slack
Record the time of arrival
Display how many employees have arrived
This project is fun and easy to make (no need for special skills) and will let you discover a bit more about home automation and even refresh your knowledge of Excel!
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Step 2
Step 1: REQUIRED MATERIAL
Raspberry Pi 2, 3 ($20~$35) // for RPi 2, you will need a WiFi dongle
16Gb SD card ($9)
1 PIR module ($2) link + wires
An old webcam
A Google Drive account
TOTAL: less than $40!
The entire installation should take about an 1 hour.
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Step 3
Step 2: SET UP YOUR PROTA PI
You first need to build the smart hub that will control the automation of your ring bell and connect all devices together. Prota OS for Raspberry Pi is our free smart hub OS which is very easy to install. In no time you will turn your Raspberry Pi into a smart home automation hub!