What would be the approximate cost of implementing an attendance-monitoring solution for a school with passive tags for approximately 500 students?
—Name withheld
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The answer would depend on the number of rooms and areas in which you want to identify students. If there are, say, 10 classrooms in which you wish to do so, that would cost about half as much as identifying them in 20 classrooms.
As a back-of-the-envelope way of estimating the price tag, I would figure that each transponder is going to cost $3, since it will need some protection against being damaged while worn. And I would figure roughly $3,000 per reader, fully installed, in a room.
You will also require a server running some software that either passes data on to an existing attendance system, or that stores attendance information. That might run you $5,000, installed. And you will need to pay a systems integrator to set up the system, which might cost about $10,000 to $15,000.
—Mark Roberti, Editor, RFID Journal