Open Science Journal of Electrical and Electronic Engineering

2017; 4(2): 10-15

http://www.openscienceonline.com/journal/j3e

Paper Currency Sorter with Fingerprint Access

Protection for Ethiopian Small and Medium
Enterprises (SME)
Mary Charlemaine Angderson Abas1, Patrick Dela Corte Cerna2
1
Department of Electrical and Electronics Technology, Federal Technological Institute – University, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
2
Department of Information and Communication Technology, Federal Technological Institute – University, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Email address
mcaabas@ieee.org (M. C. A. Abas), pcerna@ieee.org (P. D. C. Cerna)

To cite this article

Mary Charlemaine Angderson Abas, Patrick Dela Corte Cerna. Paper Currency Sorter with Fingerprint Access Protection for Ethiopian
Small and Medium Enterprises (SME). Open Science Journal of Electrical and Electronic Engineering. Vol. 4, No. 2, 2017, pp. 10-15.

Received: October 29, 2017; Accepted: November 14, 2017; Published: February 3, 2018

Abstract
Money is a non-negotiable, indispensable commodity in every person’s life. The possession of money in itself is a resource and
the usage of it can help acquire resources. Most of the things we use daily have monetary value, whether directly or indirectly.
In Ethiopia, small and medium enterprises (SME) usually use a paper currency counter to put all of the money they have
earned and received that is not in order and usually will cost a lot of time to organize. However, there has been a lot of
challenges occurred in SME’s in sorting paper currency. Usually, SME owners experience during difficult times whenever
there are many people gathering around their store to buy anything. The proposed design and implementation create an
automated safekeeping machine, which acts as Paper Currency Sorter with Fingerprint Access Protection for Ethiopian SME’s.
It will help them lessen their worries every time that the store will be jam-packed with customer. Since it is operated
automatically, everything can be done smoothly and will definitely make them worry-free from any thieves because it has a
special feature of registering your own fingerprint for access protection. This study will sort out money paper currency
according to its color (value). It will also have a safety lock that can only determine the fingerprint of the owner. The study
considers banknotes that are currently functional, i.e., 1 Birr, 5 Birr, 10 Birr, 50 Birr and 100 Birr. This design is strictly for
sorting money and safekeeping. This design is not a fast paced sorter, and its precision is not perfect when it comes to the last
paper bill to be sorted. The device will receive an error if the wrong value of money is sensed at the color sensor.
Keywords
Color Sensor, Arduino, Paper Notes, SME, Ethiopia

in facilitating the management of the economy of countries at

1. Introduction large, automatic recognition of currency becomes a great area
of interest for researchers and developers [1].
Today, money has become an essential part in people’s The ability to differentiate colors is essential for human’s
daily life. Money is a non-negotiable, indispensable life as it gives us the awareness about the changes in
commodity in every person’s life. The possession of money surrounding through our vision [2]. Moreover, by exploiting
in itself is a resource and the usage of it can help acquire the ability of color capture, intelligent machine gains the
resources. Most of the things we use daily have monetary function to differentiate, sort and organize. The project
value, whether directly or indirectly. Money’s power is includes sensors that detect color of the object then sends the
indisputable after the power of self-belief in human life. In information to Arduino Uno which in turn adjusts the servo
Ethiopia, small and medium enterprises (SME) usually use a motor which located just below the ball slider to move it left
paper currency counter to put all of the money they have and right [3].
earned and received that is not in order and usually will cost Colors are light waves that are no different than the
a lot of time to organize. Since currency has great importance electromagnetic waves emitted by cell phones. It is our brain
11 Mary Charlemaine Angderson Abas and Patrick Dela Corte Cerna: Paper Currency Sorter with Fingerprint Access
Protection for Ethiopian Small and Medium Enterprises (SME)

cells that interpret them as real colors [4]. However, there has by a light intensity to frequency converter method. The
been a lot of challenges occurred in SME’s in sorting paper robotic arm is controlled by a microcontroller based system
currency. Usually, SME owners experience during difficult which controls DC servo motors.
times whenever there are many people gathering around their Gaikar et. Al [11] design a Object Sorting using Color
store to buy anything. The first factor is speed of sorting. Sensor and Arduino. The arduino microcontroller is an
This is due to the limitation of response time for a human eye intriguing and prestigious venture for techies, who might
[5]. The eyes will always take some time to see an image and want to consolidate Electronics, Machine building and
project this to the brain to initiate visual sensation. After the programming. The shading Sorting Machines is utilized for
brain has received the image, it will take some time for the sorting mostly RGB hues. It isolates diverse hued questions
brain to determine the colour of the object too [6]. and characterizes them into individual
Ethiopia is one the countries in East Africa and it is compartments/glasses. It is electronic task made up of
popular for its diverse cultural destinations. Ethiopian Arduino UNO alongside Arduino UNO BOB, RGB shading
currency is referred to as Birr. 1 Birr is basically separated sensor, three servo engines and some plastic channels and
into 100 cents. The Ethiopian Birr notes are 100, 50, 10, 5 tube parts [11].
and 1 [7]. The proposed design and implementation create an Joy [12] design a robotic arm, which can pick and sort
automated safe-keeping machine which acts as Paper objects of different color. The mechanical structure of the
Currency Sorter with Fingerprint Access Protection for robot was assembled using aluminum brackets which helped
Ethiopian SME’s. It will help them lessen their worries every to reduce the weight without losing the mechanical strength.
time that the store will be jam-packed with customer. Since it The aim of the project was to have a fully functional robotic
is operated automatically, everything can be done smoothly arm which sorts different colored balls and the target is
and will definitely make them worry-free from any thieves achieved successfully. In the final run of the project red,
because it has a special feature of registering your own yellow and green balls were successfully sorted. The color
fingerprint for access protection. sensor IC TCS3200 show almost stable response in various
sunlight conditions.
2. Related Works In view of the above literature, it is evident that there has
been no or limited study on the application of embedded
Zeggeye and Assabie [8] propose hardware and software system using microcontroller with a color sensor in sorting
solutions which take images of an Ethiopian currency from a Paper Currency.
scanner and camera as an input. It combined characteristic
features of currency and local feature descriptors to design a 3. Materials and Methods
four level classifier. The design has a categorization
component, which is responsible to denominate the currency 3.1. Materials Used in the Research Study
notes into their respective denomination and verification
component which is responsible to validate whether the This study will sort out money paper currency according
currency is genuine or not. The system is tested using to its color (value). It will also have a safety lock that can
genuine Ethiopian currencies, counterfeit Ethiopian only determine the fingerprint of the owner. The study
currencies and other countries’ currencies. The denomination considers banknotes that are currently functional, i.e., 1
accuracy for genuine Ethiopian currency, counterfeit Birr, 5 Birr, 10 Birr, 50 Birr and 100 Birr. This design is
currencies and other countries’ currencies is found to be strictly for sorting money and safekeeping. This design is
90.42%, 83.3% and 100% respectively. The verification not a fast paced sorter, and its precision is not perfect when
accuracy of our system is 96.13% [8]. it comes to the last paper bill to be sorted. The device will
Reddy [9] design a Pick and Place Robotic Arm with receive an error if the wrong value of money is sensed at
conveyor belt arrangement in sorting objects based on colour. the color sensor.
It is autonomous robot that can identify objects when placed The Paper Currency Sorter with Fingerprint Access
on the conveyor belt based on color sensing and then sort by Protection utilize arduino mega micro controller and the
relocating them to a specific location. It will be using a accompanying shields, sensors and modules as deflected in
picking arm which uses a controller motor to pick the Table 1.
particular object from the conveyor belt and place it Table 1. List of Materials.
according to the color sensing. Micro controller (AT89S52)
allows dynamic and faster control. Liquid Crystal Display Items Quantity
Foam Board 2 pcs.
(LCD) makes the system user-friendly. AT89S52 Micro
Old Robot Wheel 2 pcs.
controller is the heart of the circuit as it controls all the Barbecue Stick 6 pcs.
functions [9]. DC Motor 2 pcs.
Similarly, Dhanoj et. al [10] presents an application to sort TCS3200 Color Sensor 1 pc.
colored objects with a robotic arm. A robotic arm which Arduino Atmega2560 Microcontroller 1 pc.
Servomotor 3 pcs.
picks different colored cubes and sorts them placing in
Fingerprint Module 1 pcs.
different cups. The detection of the particular colour is done
 Open Science Journal of Electrical and Electronic Engineering 2017; 4(2): 10-15 12

3.1.1. Arduino Mega 2560 cycle) with frequency directly proportional to light intensity
The Mega 2560 is a microcontroller board based on the (irradiance). The TCS3200 reads an 8x8 array of photodiodes
ATmega2560. It has 54 digital input/output pins (of which 15 [15].
can be used as PWM outputs), 16 analog inputs, 4 UARTs
(hardware serial ports), a 16 MHz crystal oscillator, a USB
connection, a power jack, an ICSP header, and a reset button.
It contains everything needed to support the microcontroller;
simply connect it to a computer with a USB cable or power it
with a AC-to-DC adapter or battery to get started. The Mega
2560 board is compatible with most shields designed for the
Uno and the former boards Duemilanove or Diecimila [13].

Figure 3. Color Sensor.

3.1.4. Servo Motor

A servo motor is a rotary or linear actuator that precisely
controls the angular or linear position, velocity and
acceleration. It has a motor connected to a sensor for position
feedback. It receives control signals that would dictate the
position of the servo shaft and a power applied to its DC
Figure 1. Arduino Mega 2560 Controller. motor to turn the shaft to that position [16].

3.1.2. DC Motors
Electrical motors are everywhere around us. Almost all the
electro-mechanical movements we see around us are caused
either by a AC or a DC motor. Here we will be exploring DC
motors. This is a device that converts DC electrical energy to
a mechanical energy. This DC or direct current motor works
on the principal, when a current carrying conductor is placed
in a magnetic field, it experiences a torque and has a
tendency to move.
This is known as motoring action. If the direction of
current in the wire is reversed, the direction of rotation also
reverses. When magnetic field and electric field interact they
Figure 4. Servo Motor TowerPro MG-995.
produce a mechanical force, and based on that the working
principle of DC motor is established [14]. 3.1.5. Fingerprint Scanner for Arduino
A fingerprint scanner system has two basic jobs -- it needs
to get an image of your finger, and it needs to determine
whether the pattern of ridges and valleys in this image
matches the pattern of ridges and valleys in pre-scanned
images.
Only specific characteristics, which are unique to every
fingerprint, are filtered and saved as an encrypted biometric
key or mathematical representation. No image of a
fingerprint is ever saved, only a series of numbers (a binary
code), which is used for verification. The algorithm cannot
be reconverted to an image, so no one can duplicate your
Figure 2. DC Motor. fingerprints [17]. Features Make adding fingerprint detection
and verification super simple. Typically used in safes-theres a
3.1.3. TCS3200 Color Sensor high powered DSP chip that does the image rendering
The TCS3200 programmable color light-to-frequency calculation feature-finding and searching Connect to any
converter combines configurable silicon photodiodes and a microcontroller or system with TTL serial and send packets
current-to-frequency converter on a single monolithic CMOS of data [17].
integrated circuit. The output is a square wave (50% duty
13 Mary Charlemaine Angderson Abas and Patrick Dela Corte Cerna: Paper Currency Sorter with Fingerprint Access
Protection for Ethiopian Small and Medium Enterprises (SME)

3.2. Methods and Design

Figure 6 shows the flow chart of the whole process of the

design. Upon plugging the device on a laptop, the
microcontroller will start. The first servomotor will start to
function. After inserting the money at the servomotor, the
servomotor will now move the paper currency money at the
color sensor that is programmed of the microcontroller for
the determination of color value. After determining the color
value of the paper currency money, the elevator-like storage
will move its position on which floor 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th
floor which represents the color value that is assigned. Then
Figure 5. Fingerprint Scanner. the second servomotor will move the paper bill money to the
storage floor as assigned.

Figure 6. System Flowchart of the Design.

 Open Science Journal of Electrical and Electronic Engineering 2017; 4(2): 10-15 14

Figure 7 shows the process of how the fingerprint will act

when turned on for the first time. As the whole device is turned 3.4. Standard Operation
on, the fingerprint scanner will also turn on. A LED will indicate Step 1: Upon turning on the device, the first servomotor
that the module is on and running. There will be a computer will move the money inserted done at a time.
software where the owner’s information will be stored. Then the Step 2: The sensor will now then determine if the paper bill
fingerprint of the owner can be added to the module. inserted whether 100 Birr, 50 Birr, 10 Birr, 5 Birr and 1 birr.
Step 3: After determining the value, the elevator type
storage will decide which floor it will stop. First floor for 100
Birr, second floor for the 50 Birr, Third Floor for 10 Birr,
Fourth Floor for 5 Birr and Fifth Floor for 1 Birr
Step 4: After determining which floor it will go to, the DC
motor will now move the paper bill to the storage. The finger
print access protection is optional.
Step 5: Finally, upon turning on the device for the first time,
the finger print of the owner must be recorded or enrolled.

4. Conclusion and Recommendation

The study utilized the arduino micro controller to assist
Ethiopian SME’s organizing their earning easy which can
save time. It can be further improved by using other materials
that will make the process of the paper bill money more
precise, which is transferring the money on it a time even
though there are a lot of numbers of paper bills inserted at the
first servo motor of the device. Another improvement that
can be added is the returning of money when the sensor
Figure 7. Circuit Diagram of the Luggage Cart.
cannot read the color value of the money inserted. Another is
3.3. Ethiopian Notes and Color to reject the money inserted when the value is not in correct
or programmed in the sensor.
Table 2 shows the Ethiopian currency in paper notes. 100
birr correspond to color green, 50 birr correspond to color References
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15 Mary Charlemaine Angderson Abas and Patrick Dela Corte Cerna: Paper Currency Sorter with Fingerprint Access
Protection for Ethiopian Small and Medium Enterprises (SME)

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Biography
[9] Reddy, D. V. K. (2014). Sorting of Objects Based on Colour
By Pick and Place Robotic Arm and With. Conveyor Belt Engr. Mary Charlemaine Angderson Abas
Arrangement. International Journal of Mechanical is an Assistant Professor in the Department of
Engineering and Robotics Research. Vol 3, Issue 1. Electronics and Electrical Technology of
[10] Dhanoj, M, Reshma K. V., Sheeba V., and Marymol, P. (2015). Federal Technological Institute – University.
Colour Sensor Based Object Sorting Robort Using Embedded She is both a licensed Engineer in Electronics
System. Ijarcce, 4 (4), 619–622. and Instrumentation and Control. She has
https://doi.org/10.17148/IJARCCE.2015.44144 obtained her Bachelor in Electronics and
[11] Gaikar, T. G., Zakobar S. N., Bhandari, R. S., Patil, S. S. Communication Engineering and Masters in Engineering in
(2016). Object Sorting using Color Sensor and Arduino. Electronics and Communication Engineering in 2004 and 2014
International Journal on Recent and Innovation Trends in respectively in University of St. LaSalle, Philippines. She has
Computing and Communication. Volume: 4 Issue: 4 483–486. published several research paper in a reputable journal publication.
[12] Joy, A. (2014). Object Sorting Robotic Arm Based on Colour, A member of IEEE with research interest on the area of
International Journal of Advanced Research in Electrical, Automation and Renewable Energ.
Electronics and Instrumentation Engineering. Vol. 3, Issue 3,
pp. 7741–7746. Engr. Patrick Dela Corte Cerna, PhD is an
Associate Professor in Department of
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IS/IT international organization e.g. IEEE
[14] DC Motor (2017). Retrieved from Computer Society, Association of Computing Machinery (ACM),
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[15] Color Sensor (2017). Retrieved from (IACSIT). He has published over ten (10) research papers in
http://ams.com/eng/Products/Light-Sensors/Color- reputable journal publication. His research interest is on Internet of
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Things, Cloud Computing, Machine Learning, and Information
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control-with-an-arduino/ Accessed July 2016
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http://www.bioelectronix.com/what_is_biometrics.html,