ZINARA RFID swipe card and monitoring system

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to reduce fraud at toll collection points by ensuring that all toll fee revenue is collected at one central point and also to reduce the risk of theft and loss by doing away with the handling of cash at tollgate stations. To get an insight into the operations of ZINARA, a number of methodologies were used by the researcher which included interviews, questionnaires, and observations. The use of these methodologies helped to get detailed information, including shortcomings of the system ZINARA was using. The fact finding techniques used found out that the system that was in use took a long time to serve one motorist and this resulted in queues forming at toll stations. The system was also found to have loopholes and motorist could easily evade paying by conniving with toll operators. The RFID system was developed and documented using Microsoft Word 2010, PHP programming language, Dreamweaver CS6 and MySQL database server. The developer adopted a direct changeover strategy since it is not possible to do parallel processing on a toll gate system and besides, once the new system was in operation, there was no manual system to fall back on if the need arises. It was suggested that the FRID system could be further improved by networking the entire toll collection points across the country so as to enable vehicle and goods tracking.