For the past three and a half months I have been working with a group of my engineering peers at UBC to build a complete system for managing a library. We did our final demo today and everything went smoothly. The system uses RFID tags to keep track of books and communicates wirelessly using a ZigBee module. There is a built in charging circuit which helps keep the five NiMH powered up and an AtMega88 microcontroller to handle all the logic. Everything else is taken care of by a Drupal website with a few custom modules. Here is a quick demo of the unit:

The system supports adding new users (who have library cards with an embedded RFID tag), inserting new books, checking books in and out, passively finding lost books, and providing directions to find books in the library. Here are a few photos of the final construction process:

I would say the project was a great success; we finished our integration testing early on and even had time to make library cards and build a nice metal case. Lots of credit goes out to the other members of my team: Aaron, Henry, Roland, and Steve. Very glad to be done!