Is there a way to use laptop's built-in biometric sensors in python applications?

Question

I am trying to make an application using python that registers students' attendance. I'm planning to use my laptop's fingerprint built-in fingerprint device to identify the students and register the attendance.

I've tried some web searches but I couldn't find anyway to use built-in fingerprint devices for applications with python. Do you know any way to do it. The device that i want to use for fingerprints is Lenovo ThinkPad L540.

I managed to find some stuff like windows biometric framework but those things were to be used with other languages.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/secbiomet/biometric-service-api-portal?redirectedfrom=MSDN

Answer 1

From what I can tell, this absolutely can be done. The following link is for a python wrapper around the Windows Biometric Framework. It is around 4 years old, but the functionality it offers still seems to work fine.

https://github.com/luspock/FingerPrint

The identify function in this wrapper prints out the Sub Factor value whenever someone places a matching finger on the scanner. In my experimentation, the returned Sub Factor is unique to each finger that is stored. In the first day you use this, you would just fill a dictionary with sub factors and student names, then that is everything you need for your use case.

Considering that this wrapper only makes use of the system biometric unit pool, the drawback here is that you have to add all of your student's fingers to your PC through the windows sign-in options, meaning they would be able to unlock it. If you are okay with that, it seems like this will suit your needs.

It would also be possible for you to disable login with fingerprint and only use the system pool for this particular use case. That would give you what you want and keep your PC safe from anyone that has their fingerprint stored in the system pool.

If you want to make use of a private pool, you would have to add that functionality to the wrapper yourself. That's totally possible, but it would be a lot of work.

One thing to note about the Windows Biometric Framework is that it requires the process calling the function to have focus. In order for me to test the wrapper, I used the command-line through the Windows Console Host. Windows Terminal doesn't work, because it doesn't properly acquire focus. You can also use tkinter and call the functions with a button.

Answer 2

You can not use. The fingerprint sensor associated with laptop/mobile can be used for authentication purpose only. Means, you can add the more number of fingerprints who are eligible to access the device. Then, device will allow any one of them to unlock the device. It will not record whose fingerprint it is. It will just say, a fingerprint is authenticated or not.

For recording the attendance, you must go with the time attendances systems. if you want to build software based attendance system with the help of scanner, then you have to go with the fingerprint scanners like mfs100, zk7500 and etc.