A visitor walks up to the reception desk. They look at the webcam for a moment.

Before they say a word, the system already knows if they have been here before.

If they are new, the receptionist scans their national ID card. The ID number fills itself in. No typing. No typos.

I did not build this system from scratch. Around 2018, it was handed over to me. From then on, I was solely responsible for its enhancements, modifications, bug fixes, and new features.

Owning someone else's system teaches you things that building your own never does. In this post, I will walk you through how it worked, the two problems that taught me the most, and what I would change if I built it today.

This is part 1 of a short series. Later parts go deeper into barcode scanning, face recognition, and reporting.

The Problem It Solved

Reception desks deal with the same issues every day.

Typing ID numbers by hand. National ID numbers are long. One wrong digit makes the record useless.

No memory of past visitors.…