Clocking in and out with a face check

Attendance comes to the phone

Until March, Mintage Connect showed employees information about their work. This month it started recording it. We added clock-in and clock-out from the app, with a face check so that the person tapping the button is the employee whose time is being recorded.

Before the first clock-in, an employee registers their face. They can later update that registration, using thumbnails to see which photos are on file and retake only the ones they need. Clock times are shown in the phone's local time.

Making it work with real cameras

Most of the month's commits went into getting face capture to behave on actual phones. The first version took photos automatically when it thought a face was in view, which proved unreliable, so we replaced it with a plain Take Photo button and added a guide showing where to position the face.

On iOS, the front camera produced blurry images and face detection sometimes failed outright; both were fixed. We corrected the camera preview's shape and reduced how far people were asked to turn their heads during registration, which many found awkward.

Simpler registration

Towards the end of the month we simplified registration again, so it now asks for five photos with the employee looking straight at the camera instead of a series of turned poses. It is quicker to complete and gives more consistent results. We also wrote up a plan for the feature and refreshed the app's dependencies along the way.