Assets and Keys Management System Using NFC Technology

With the increasing number of companies, universities and institutions it is necessary to preserve their assets contained inside their rooms and labs. Managing and protecting assets is an important issue and usually a dedicated person at the institute carries out this work in a bureaucratic way. In this work, we describe an innovative technological solution to the management problem of using traditional mechanical keys. Based on this need, the aim of this work is to design and implement an automated assets and keys management system. In the proposed system, one can keep the keys in a key-cabinet, which can be locked or opened automatically. We rely on near field communication (NFC) technology, which exists in most of the modern smart phones, to identify each key. Our main controller will be an Android based smart phone interfaced through its headphone jack to control the key-cabinet lock. The smart phone contains all needed hardware and software components to achieve our goal. The employees can borrow the keys easily using their NFC identification tags without using paper records. The opening of the key-cabinet door is controlled using a dedicated smart phone mounted near the key-cabinet. Moreover, employees will be able to borrow and return keys in any time and keep their track recorded in a mobile application.