RFID Car Recognition System in enhancing apartment access control and security management

In Malaysia, Large numbers of people are staying in apartments because of the huge population and limited land for housing. However, house buyers are looking for apartment units with good facilities in term of financial, security, maintenance and people management. Currently, security has become a main factor in affecting buyers’ decision whereby presence of card access control system and security guards are the main determinants. The problem with card access control system is it only recognizes the cards rather than the cars or owners. Anyone with the cards can enter and exit the apartment freely, therefore, it requires 24 hours monitoring of security guards. Moreover, original car owners, who have lost their cards, will incur loss because they had to file a police report and pay to register a new card.
In this project, the first objective is to analyze the problem of current apartments’ card access control system. A qualitative research was done on 6 apartments selected from Ipoh and Kuala Lumpur. Questions were also asked to collect information about the soon-to-be developed system and to analyze the primary response given by the security guards and employees in the maintenance office of the system. At the end of the research, it was found out that averagely there are 24.5 cards lost reported yearly in each apartment situated in Kuala Lumpur or Ipoh. Other than that, 67% of the respondents agree that the RFID access control system can enhance their security control. Nevertheless, the main objective of the project is to develop Radio-frequency Identification (RFID) car recognition and access control system. The fixed attachment of RFID tag can lower the possibility of the RFID tag to be stolen, lost or damaged. The system recognize cars and with the assumption of the cars are always driven by the owner, it does not require the monitoring of security, hence reducing their workload. Another post-development research and user acceptance testing have been done to test and analyze the response provided by apartment’s management team and residents on the developed RFID system. 5 employees or security guards and 5 residents from apartments in Ipoh are involved in the research and testing. All of the respondents provides positive response of the system after being able to test the system fully and will accept the system if it is implemented.