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Show HN: Personal Storage System with a PI
- anotheryou 10y agono finished picture?
- agumonkey 10y agoA video wouldn't be out of order either.
- timgrossmann 10y agoGood idea, will record one and add it to the project, Thanks
- agumonkey 10y agoThanks to you my sir.
- timgrossmann 10y agoOh, sry. Definitely will add that soon. Basically it's just the screen put in the case and all the other stuff stuck inside the case.
- Jaruzel 10y agoCan you add captions to box making photos? I think that's an acetate bath at the end to smooth the edges but i'm not sure.
- timgrossmann 10y agoSure, i'll add that immediately
- Jaruzel 10y agoCheers, they make much more sense now!
- jlgaddis 10y agoFinally, a use for my CueCat!
- mszcz 10y agoI thought nobody remembered that!
- TD-Linux 10y agoI used to have a couple I would attach to coworker's computers randomly to confuse them. Doesn't work anymore because no one uses desktops with PS/2 ports...
- mastre_ 10y agoTime for an USB-to-PS/2 adapter!
- timgrossmann 10y agoHaha, why would you make it look like a cat :D
- Jaruzel 10y agoThose only work if the PS/2 device can 'switch' to USB mode. I very much doubt the CueCat could ever do this.
- JohnKacz 10y agoCool. Looks like the housing/case is 3d printed, but it looked odd and I didn't know what the "washing station" thing was. Now I learned about Polyjet 3D Printing.
- timgrossmann 10y agoThanks, the printer is an Objet30 3D Printer. The washing station is, like you probably already know by now, to get rid of the support material.
- Normal_gaussian 10y agoGreat project. Marking this as something to explore for our managing our office storage.
- timgrossmann 10y agoHaha, thank you. Let me know if you come across problems or bugs.
- crudbug 10y agoUseful project. How are you getting the product information ? Is there a public barcode database ?
- 0942v8653 10y agoLooks like it uses https://www.outpan.com https://www.outpan.com
- timgrossmann 10y agoLike already written, the information comes from Outpan... If the product isn't already on outpan you're asked to enter the name of the product and a new entry is created.
- crudbug 10y agoIt is a crowdsourced model. I did check online for other API services [0..2] and GT1 [3] information. [0] http://www.ean-search.org/ http://www.ean-search.org/ [1] https://www.barcodelookup.com/api https://www.barcodelookup.com/api [2] http://eandata.com/ http://eandata.com/ [3] http://www.gs1.org/barcodes/ean-upc http://www.gs1.org/barcodes/ean-upc
- drcross 10y agoWhy do so many projects go straight into a technical description of their solution without posing what the problem actually is. Here is the only justification of why they are doing this project- "I want to build an application, with which i can manage the items in my basement (preferably groceries)". What does this even mean? This trend frequently happens especially on HN and it denies the reader a chance at weighing up the solution within context of the problem.
- GuiA 10y agoBecause most developers are not all that familiar with design/marketing/etc. They make something cool, put up the code on github, and it usually stops there. It does have the nice side effect that most projects are not polluted by marketing bullshit in their README.
- moyta 10y agoHe definitely could do a better job explaining what he is trying to accomplish, but I pity the person who has to use the barcode scanner he suggested, when you go below the $100 price point and are looking for a new in box handheld scanner, there is just crap for options and you will get to sit there and try to scan the same item repeatedly, until you give up and key every 8th item in by hand. I would highly recommend buying a used Metrologic or Datalogic handheld scanner at or above $50, it'll work a lot better and (if programmed) can usually handle 2D barcodes. This is the major reason you see Fred Meyers spending $5k a pop on new Datalogic 9800i's, and why Walmart had the NCR 7878 custom built for them, scanning performance is a make it or break it deal. On the Pi side, I'd sub in a OrangePi Plus 2E since it has 16GB of eMMC and has a fully libre stack now at a lower cost, and would likely nab a used monitor for $10 locally rather than pay for a low res 7" at a premium price.
- timgrossmann 10y agoThank you! I definitely will explain it better/in more detail. Thank you for the advice with the hardware, I'm not yet too familiar with the hardware side, but I'm learning and your feedback is really important to me, thank you. I tested the barcode scanner with quite a few products and thought it to be pretty good for the money. I mean, for me it's a personal thing, so no need for super high performance. If the item is already in the system, you can scan 2-3 times per second, which is pretty good i think. I'll definitely look up the PI and monitor part thank you !
- Sanddancer 10y agoInteresting project. Though first thing I'd say would be that this seems like something that would be a natural for a touch screen. Given you're going to be pulling most of the info from bar codes, you're not going to be typing very long/often, and a keyboard would be added clutter for the majority of the time.
- timgrossmann 10y agoYes, i thought about that in the beginning too. The problem i had was, that if a product isn't already in the database (outpan), you have to enter the name to add it. I really dislike capacitive displays, especially writing on them and i think a onscreen keyboard is also really annoying. Right now i have a keyboard which has a little touchpad, to get rid of the separate mouse. But i also would prefer a touchscreen. Being spoiled from the nice keyboards on smartphones and tablets, i couldn't live with a PC onscreen keyboard.
- libeclipse 10y agoIt might just be me, but I don't actually understand what the project is. The readme says since things about storage but I didn't get anything more.
- timgrossmann 10y agoI'm sorry, i didn't explain it very well, i'll definitely fix that. Basically the problem was, that we had a lot of groceries in large amounts while the ones we needed weren't there at all. If we went shopping we mostly forgot to check what we already have and bought even more of the things we already had, forgetting the stuff we needed. The Project therefore is a simple tool to scan your products and keep a list of the things you have (with the amount). If you're on your way to the grocery store and you realise, that you don't really know if you need this or that product, you can simply VPN into your home network and check the stuff you have at home. Did this make it any clearer ?
- Elvewyn 10y agoThis is a problem I solved with a piece of paper and pencil (or a note keeping app on my phone) :) "I'm low on ketchup, better write that down." I like the project, don't get me wrong, but for me personally it would just add a layer of complexity.
- timgrossmann 10y agoHaha, yeah I absolutely understand that.
- contingencies 10y agoThis seems like an over-engineered solution to a non-problem. Formal stock control is only useful if you have serious issues (eg. theft, very large inventory, unidentifiable packages). The author could solve his problem by simply keeping ketchup in the kitchen like sane people. So in summary there is a barcode scanner, a Raspberry Pi and a screen. Where's the label printer? Not quoted: still more cost! It would have been far cheaper and more practical to install a new shelf.
- timgrossmann 10y agoHey, you're right. But since I'm a CS student who likes to try out and learn stuff, over engineering is not a bad thing for me. For a little home, we have an unnecessarily large inventory and it is really comfortable to just look it up on the smartphone than take the staircase to the basement and search through the stock :D It's not just ketchup btw ;) I'm still searching for an over engineered use case for my new label printer... The printing with this system is simply done with a Wifi printer nearly anyone (at least here in Germany) has at home. You can simply print a list of all the stock and if you want even a simple groceries list of which items are empty ;) We installed a new shelf but once this one is full, you still got the problem. I mean, you could add even more, but at one point the room is full and you're back where you started :D
- nacnud 10y agoNow you just need a little robot to fetch the things from your basement and put them into a vacuum-tube delivery system.. :)
- Thomas_9 10y agoI agree with this. I am using a dead simple todo list to keep track of these things : www.mytinytodo.net It is more than enough for me, I am really happy of it.
- amelius 10y agoIt could still be useful to people running an online shop for example?
- 0xmohit 10y agoThis reminded me of HomeMirror [0]. [0] https://github.com/HannahMitt/HomeMirror https://github.com/HannahMitt/HomeMirror
- timgrossmann 10y agoAwesome project, would be interesting to add something like a leap motion to make it controllable without smearing the mirror :D
- pingec 10y agoWow, that is one expensive case. The cost of the material to print that on default settings on that printer is 150 EUR.
- timgrossmann 10y agoWell, good point. Forgot to add that, good thing i hadn't to pay that :D Where did you look that up?
- pingec 10y agoThe Objet software tells you how much material will be used, then just multiply with material price.
- timgrossmann 10y agoYes ok, thought you looked that up online.
- weeefun 10y agoLooks like a cool project. But do I see this correctly that every time you're adding AND removing something from your inventory, you need to scan it? :(
- timgrossmann 10y agoYes, that's the idea behind it. If you have an idea how to improve that, i would love to hear it
- teh_klev 10y ago> which led to me having 10 bottles of ketchup in my basement I went through this problem for a while, the same with salad cream and toilet paper :) Could also be useful to add: * an attribute that indicates how much of a thing has been used * an item's age or purchase date * the expiry date or best before date (yes, yes...I know these things aren't precise, and I decide if something is still good on the basis of does it look ok? does it smell ok? and common sense when it comes to fish/meat) For example...when I occasionally make hummus, my part-used jar of tahini paste ends up at the back of the cupboard where it gets forgotten about but is still within its use-by date. On the next trip to the supermarket, where I include ingredients to make hummus, I end up buying another jar of tahini paste because a) I can't remember if I still have tahini paste and b) if I do remember about that jar, was it opened? how much is left? and is it still good? Knowing the state of perishables, whether unopened or part used would help save on waste and save money on unnecessary purchases. Also I think a better name would be "Personal Stock Control", "Storage System" makes me think of disks and data storage. Just a thought or two.
- timgrossmann 10y agoHaha, thank you for all the ideas. They are pretty cool! I knew I'm not the only one with this kind of problem :D Thank you for the idea with the new name. You're right, it sounds a bit more suitable.
- teh_klev 10y agoNow, just imagine if you could get it to order all the things you need and have them delivered :)
- rhoads 10y agoThis is a cool project, but I guess it could be a phone app that your entire family could use collaboratively to scan, tag as used and add to a shopping list.
- timgrossmann 10y agoThanks, these are some pretty nice ideas right there!