Kiosk mode with support for Barcode, RFID, Web NFC

Attendance time-tracking in an environment, where the user has no access to Kimai (e.g. in a warehouse), by using a barcode or RFID scanner to start and stop timesheets.

Offered by

Kevin Papst

199 € excl. VAT (per year) ^*

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A Kimai plugin, which allows using barcodes for punch-in and punch-out time tracking with Kimai. You can use it with a barcode scanner, with a web-camera, with a RFID reader or an NFC reader.

It also supports a “freestyle” mode, which allows to enter any free configurable code (up to 120 characters), so you can also use other devices for starting/stopping:

an electronic USB number-pad
an RFID scanner that acts as keyboard
an Android device with Web NFC support (only Chrome browser)

This bundle is the solution for you, if you want to use Kimai in a kiosk mode, where users register their attendance time through punch-in (coming) and punch-out (leaving) mode.

It could be as simple as:

Hand out NFC or RFID tokens to your employees
Mount a tablet to the wall in your entrance room
Let your users check-in & check-out when entering the building by scanning their tokens

You can test it in the “Plugins” demo.

Features

Start/Stop work with
- Barcode scanner (via device camera, only works via HTTPS)
- Barcode scanner (via USB or Bluetooth)
- RFID scanner (via USB or Bluetooth)
- Web NFC (see docs)
Upon starting/stopping a record via this plugin, the user will see a short overview screen with the entries of the current week (including some statistics)
New user profile screen for the “codes”
- Display all codes for user
- Generate a random code (automatically done if none is existing yet for the active code-type)
- Re-use existing code for user by entering (or scanning) it manually
User specific settings to configured allowed start and end working time (user can only clock in between these times)
Supports the following 1D barcodes:
- Code 128
- Code 39
- UPC-A (scanner needs to transmit check digit)
- Code 2 of 5
- Code 2 of 5 interleaved
- Codabar (scanner needs to transmit start & stop digits)
Optional: show active / inactive users in login screen
Many CSS classes to customize the look with Custom CSS

You need to configure a non-global activity for starting the record via this plugin. This will be used for every recorded timesheet that is created using the kiosk mode.

Hardware

Self-built setups

This is NOT a hardware recommendation, but more an idea for possible use-cases.

I tried the linked products and even though all scanner are rather cheap, they work without problems.

Raspberry PI setup with touch screen (eg. for wall mount)
RFID scanner by Neuftech (desktop version)
RFID scanner by KKMoon (desktop version)
Barcode scanner which can also scan codes from mobile phones (desktop version)
Barcode scanner classic hand-held version

Above are affiliate links for Amazon (Germany) where I bought them myself.

Meeting-Room Tablet with NFC

This proposal contains a tablet which can be wall- and VESA mounted, has WLAN and only needs a tiny AC adapter. The NFC reader is on the front, so users can easily scan their tokens.

Meeting room tablet: AllNet DE AllNet AT (this only works if you switch to the AT Shop through the dropdown in the header of the Shop)

You need a Kiosk application, which makes sure that users always see the login screen:

Kiosk application: Android Kiosk

And you need a bunch of NFC tokens:

NFC tags: NFC Tag Shop

Licenses

The following libraries are used when using barcodes with the Kiosk mode:

Barcode scanning: https://github.com/ericblade/quagga2 (Version: 0.0.18, License: MIT)
Barcode generation: https://github.com/metafloor/bwip-js (Version: 2.0.6, License: MIT)

Installation

Copy files

Extract the ZIP file and upload the included directory and all files to your Kimai installation to the new directory:

var/plugins/KioskBundle/

The file structure needs to look like this afterwards:

var/plugins/
├── KioskBundle
│   ├── KioskBundle.php
|   └ ... more files and directories follow here ...

Clear cache

After uploading the files, Kimai needs to know about the new plugin. It will be found once the cache was re-built. Call these commands from the Kimai directory:

How to reload Kimai cache

bin/console kimai:reload --env=prod

It is not advised, but in case the above command fails you could try:

rm -r var/cache/prod/*

You might have to set file permissions afterwards:

Adjust file permission

You have to allow PHP (your webserver process) to write to var/ and it subdirectories.

Here is an example for Debian/Ubuntu, to be executed inside the Kimai directory:

chown -R :www-data .
chmod -R g+r .
chmod -R g+rw var/

You might not need these commands in a shared-hosting environment. And you probably need to prefix them with sudo and/or the group might be called different from www-data.

Create database

Run the following command:

bin/console kimai:bundle:kiosk:install

This will create the required database tables and update them to the latest version.

If you see an error like There are no commands defined in the "kimai:bundle:XYZ" namespace., then either the directory has a wrong name (must be var/plugins/KioskBundle/) or you forgot to clear the cache (look above).

Install assets

The following command will install the required assets (images, javascripts, styles):

bin/console assets:install

Updates

Updating the plugin works exactly like the installation:

Delete the directory var/plugins/KioskBundle/
Execute all installation steps again:
- Copy files
- Clear cache
- Update database with bin/console kimai:bundle:kiosk:install
- Update assets with bin/console assets:install

Changelog

Version 2.11.1

Compatibility: requires minimum Kimai 2.21.0

Use MapEntity for routes to fix deprecations

Version 2.11.0

Compatibility: requires minimum Kimai 2.21.0

Removed duplicate “Barcode” link in user-profile

Version 2.10.0

Compatibility: requires minimum Kimai 2.21.0

Refactoring: use new query and repository methods

Version 2.9.0