Escola Agil uses .NET MAUI to keep Brazilian schools safe

A developer in Brazil, Rafael Sacomani, was inspired to create a mobile app that could enhance security and safety in schools after reading a news story about a group of students who sneaked into a rival school wearing borrowed uniforms and vandalized the property. His app, called Escola Agil (Agile School in Portuguese), uses facial recognition technology to scan and verify students' identities and prevent trespassing. It also helps improve attendance and communication between schools and families. The app is now used by many schools across the country. He built this app in a few short months using .NET MAUI.

Solving school concerns

Escola Agil is a .NET MAUI app that uses facial recognition to enhance school safety and efficiency. The app integrates cutting-edge software technology with cameras to quickly and accurately track student attendance, streamlining the check-in and check-out process.

We have over 3,000 students clocking in and out each day, and that's just with ten schools"

The app also has a unique feature that can detect and flag unknown individuals in real time, notifying school staff and administrators via the app. This enables prompt action to prevent possible harm, making Escola Agil a vital tool for improved school security.

Today, the app uses cameras that take snapshots every two seconds – this is where the facial recognition capabilities come from. The cameras produce facial recognition events that are consumed by the application with WebSockets. The app utilizes .NET 7 APIs to consume the data with WebSockets to make it faster. Sacomani looks to further leverage .NET MAUI and incorporate real-time snapshots in a future release.

For students who are enrolled in the school, the system sends a notification to their parents or guardians when they arrive and when they leave. This way, parents or guardians can monitor their children's whereabouts and know if they return to school after lunch.

The app also solves another challenge. Facial recognition technology reduces the time it takes to take attendance. More importantly, it increases the effectiveness of school monitoring by alerting teachers and administrators if someone who isn't a registered student tries to enter the school.

Impact of .NET MAUI

Sacomani, who was already a Xamarin certified professional and a big advocate of the product, found the transition to .NET MAUI incredibly easy and timesaving. He could develop it once and have it run on desktop and mobile without downloading an emulator. The development process was overall faster and more efficient in its operating system.

A self-proclaimed .NET super fan, Sacomani is part of a WhatsApp community of over 500 people who use and support Xamarin. Learning of the release, Sacomani quickly decided to make .NET MAUI his next venture.

The transition from Xamarin to .NET MAUI was so easy. It wasn't a difficult transition at all. It was quite natural."

Sacomani developed Escola Agil in only two months! He estimates that this was 40% faster than if he had used Xamarin.

With .NET MAUI, Sacomani developed and tested the cross-platform application from a single Visual Studio project and could test the app right on his desktop.

The same project adjusts to what you're seeing. If you're on mobile, it shows a native mobile experience with hamburger menus. While on desktop, it shows a native desktop UI that doesn't look like a mobile app on the desktop."

With .NET MAUI, Sacomani used the same codebase and built an administration portal to provide technical support and manage users/permissions/rights. From his administration portal, he can easily see an overview of all the schools and verify specific information or look for errors in synchronization.

Sacomani's experience with .NET MAUI for Escola Agil was so efficient and pleasant that he plans to use .NET MAUI for future projects.

Scaling for growth

To help scale with userbase, Sacomani chose Azure App Service with SQL database on the back end. The app utilizes a multitenant configuration to keep the customers' information sandboxed.

Even with the thousands of API calls made by the Escola Agil app, Sacomani's Azure subscription has remained cost effective.

The real-time app has increased safety and security for students, parents, and teachers, and has a growing following. With ten schools currently using the app, Sacomani estimates about 30 schools adopting it by the end of the year.

Sacomani's success with .NET MAUI has inspired him to grow and plan for more features with the app.