Adafruit Fingerprint and External Memory Extension

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coolsam726
 
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Adafruit Fingerprint and External Memory Extension

Post by coolsam726 »

I am using Adafruit's fingerprint sensor for my biometric project and so far I haven't encountered any trouble with the sensor. However, it is clear that the internal memory of the sensor can only store up to 162 fingerprint templates. If my project is to use the sensor to store fingerprints of a large database of university students, I need a way to extend its capability in terms of the number of templates it can store. I was wondering, is there a way I can extend the memory of the Sensor such that it uses external memory such as a computer hard drive to store the templates? Please help...

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adafruit_support_rick
 
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Re: Adafruit Fingerprint and External Memory Extension

Post by adafruit_support_rick »

There's no way to extend the memory. You can upload and download images to the internal memory, but that may not be something you'd want to do when searching a large database such as you describe.

Instead, you want a matcher running on your database server. You would only use the fingerprint sensor for image capture (and optionally feature extraction), which you would then upload to your database. I have no idea about availability of matchers compatible with the features extracted by the scanner, but I'd be surprised if you couldn't find feature-extractors and matchers to work with the raw images.

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scotthrogers
 
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Re: Adafruit Fingerprint and External Memory Extension

Post by scotthrogers »

I have a similar situation...

Do you think that we could store the finger print template in a database along, with a unique ID for the student?

Thank you,
Scott
Last edited by scotthrogers on Fri Mar 20, 2015 12:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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scotthrogers
 
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Re: Adafruit Fingerprint and External Memory Extension

Post by scotthrogers »

Would it be possible to get around the 20 fingerprint limit by this solution?
Last edited by scotthrogers on Fri Mar 20, 2015 12:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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adafruit_support_rick
 
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Re: Adafruit Fingerprint and External Memory Extension

Post by adafruit_support_rick »

Not sure where you got 20 as the limit for the sensor. I think it's 162. But that's beside the point.

What you describe should theoretically work. So, you would query the database with the unique ID (phone number), then upload the finger template to the sensor and do a match. You would pair an R Pi with each sensor, right? I don't know if anyone has done it, but it could work.

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scotthrogers
 
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Re: Adafruit Fingerprint and External Memory Extension

Post by scotthrogers »

Thanks Rick, you're right it is 162 for this sensor.
Last edited by scotthrogers on Fri Mar 20, 2015 12:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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adafruit_support_rick
 
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Re: Adafruit Fingerprint and External Memory Extension

Post by adafruit_support_rick »

I haven't tried it, but it seems like a reasonable assumption. I think you would have to try it to be sure.

coolsam726
 
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Re: Adafruit Fingerprint and External Memory Extension

Post by coolsam726 »

adafruit_support_rick wrote:
Instead, you want a matcher running on your database server. You would only use the fingerprint sensor for image capture (and optionally feature extraction), which you would then upload to your database. I have no idea about availability of matchers compatible with the features extracted by the scanner, but I'd be surprised if you couldn't find feature-extractors and matchers to work with the raw images.
Could you kindly give me any idea on how to extract the image or its features from the sensor's flash or buffer memory to upload it to an external database? I think that is all I need to figure out for now, then I can figure out the rest.

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adafruit_support_rick
 
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Re: Adafruit Fingerprint and External Memory Extension

Post by adafruit_support_rick »

The sensor has two temporary storage areas called "character buffers". When you scan a finger, the image is stored in one of these buffers. The latest version of the library has a function getModel, which will upload the contents of character buffer 1 to your microcontroller.

You can also use the function to get the "template", which is the extracted feature set permanently stored in the sensor (the images are not retained).

Please see this thread for more information:
http://forums.adafruit.com/viewtopic.ph ... 99#p305699

coolsam726
 
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Re: Adafruit Fingerprint and External Memory Extension

Post by coolsam726 »

Thank you, I will try and get back to you in case I make any progress

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p1ng54
 
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Re: Adafruit Fingerprint and External Memory Extension

Post by p1ng54 »

Hi, Im facing similar issue as discussed in this thread I used the above mentioned functions

Code: Select all

.getImage()
and

Code: Select all

.getTemplate
but they return a

Code: Select all

0

How to save the image or the template on a MCU please advice.


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