Design and Implementation of an IoT-Enabled Automatic Token Counting Machine for Metro Systems
Received: 24 January 2026 | Revised: 13 February 2026 and 26 February 2026 | Accepted: 28 February 2026 | Online: 4 April 2026
Corresponding author: Phi Van Lam
Abstract
This study presents the design, implementation, and experimental validation of an Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled automatic token counting system based on a synchronized optical–Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) dual-verification architecture. Unlike conventional optical-only systems, which are vulnerable to token overlap and vibration, or RFID-only systems, which suffer from read collisions and duplicate Unique Token Identification (UID) detection, the proposed approach introduces a temporally synchronized validation window in which optical interruption events trigger controlled RFID UID acquisition. This mechanism establishes a deterministic one-to-one mapping between physical token movement and digital identification, significantly improving robustness under high-density batch conditions. The system integrates an ESP32-based embedded controller, opto-electronic sensing, ISO/IEC 14443-compliant passive RFID tags, and a cloud-connected MariaDB database with an ASP.NET monitoring dashboard for real-time supervision and data logging. Design parameters, including motor speed, token spacing, and RFID verification window timing, are analytically justified and experimentally optimized to ensure stable operation. Experimental evaluation conducted with batch sizes of up to 250 tokens demonstrates 100% counting accuracy across repeated trials, with an average throughput of 500 tokens/min and stable real-time data synchronization. A comparative analysis confirms that the proposed synchronized dual-verification strategy improves accuracy, collision robustness, and traceability relative to optical-only, RFID-only, and vision-based approaches while maintaining low implementation costs. The results validate the feasibility and scalability of the proposed architecture for practical metro fare management systems and provide a deployable framework for secure and large-scale Automated Fare Collection (AFC)infrastructures.
Keywords:
automatic fare collection, optical–RFID fusion, embedded IoT systems, real-time token counting, smart metro systems, applied transportation engineeringDownloads
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Copyright (c) 2026 Phi Van Lam, Tran Thi Lan, Trinh Luong Mien
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