My Inventory App - IN DEVELOPMENT - Comment for interest and suggestions!!!

What software are you using to develop this?

Is this a web app or a stand alone, locally run app?

@Rich Melvin posted:

What software are you using to develop this?

Is this a web app or a stand alone, locally run app?

Using a python built web scraper I made for data. FileMaker Pro for current app but will consider moving it to either Xcode or a web based tool based on interest. I do not have a FileMaker license so I would need to possibly raise funds to cover that. Thinking about somehow incorporating a mobile app to scan barcodes.  I develop on and for a Mac primarily.
If there is enough interest in this project, I will adjust my development to meet the majority needs.

Where do you put in the Qty of that product you have ? 

Some people buy many of one item

For instance I bought   6  Menards  40' boxcars with New Haven RR . 

Just a thought .   

@WRGMILW posted:

Where do you put in the Qty of that product you have ?

Some people buy many of one item

For instance I bought   6  Menards  40' boxcars with New Haven RR .

Just a thought .   

Will add it!

On my inventory I like to know if boxed, or not - mint or used - price paid - price sold - date sold. Also for engines I like to know what system it operates (TMCC/DCS/PS) on and road number.

Greg, That is super!  Web scraper is a new term to me, but I can see the value.  I'm sure I am like many, I made an Excel spreadsheet to keep track of my inventory.  I would like to have more details available which for my knowledge would entail manually looking up the information available on the Internet.

Below is a list of fields currently accounted for in the app. There are several tables in the app that are joined on certain references (for example, you select the road name, the road name logo generates). I am working to build out the foundation to meet everyone's needs.

@Freight Train Jim posted:

On my inventory I like to know if boxed, or not - mint or used - price paid - price sold - date sold. Also for engines I like to know what system it operates (TMCC/DCS/PS) on and road number.

I will work to incorporate these fields! Can you list out the fields you would like to appear specifically? And what tab you would like to see them on? Main/Price/Advanced? Would you be willing to send your inventory list for the reference data?

@Mark Boyce posted:

Greg, That is super!  Web scraper is a new term to me, but I can see the value.  I'm sure I am like many, I made an Excel spreadsheet to keep track of my inventory.  I would like to have more details available which for my knowledge would entail manually looking up the information available on the Internet.

If you want to send me your spreadsheet, I can incorporate the data fields from it and see where we get!

gms@thesousas.com

Overall, I am currently working to build more automation into the app, in order to pull fields based on other field values, etc. This will take a lot of scripting, so I will update as I go.

Here is a list of the current fields:

UPC
Set
Sequence Number
Road Number
Road Name
Quantity
Purchased From
Purchased Date
ProductClassification
PrimaryKey
Power
Notes
Name
MSRP
ModifiedBy
ModificationTimestamp
Model Number
Minimum Curve
Length
index
Era
Description
CreationTimestamp
CreatedBy
Condition
Colors
Brand
Amount Paid
layoutPreferences::Website
layoutPreferences::State
layoutPreferences - PrimaryKey
layoutPreferences::ModifiedBy
layoutPreferences::ModificationTimestamp
layoutPreferences::layoutName
layoutPreferences::Gauge
layoutPreferences::Email
layoutPreferences::CreationTimestamp
layoutPreferences::CreatedBy
layoutPreferences::Constant
layoutPreferences::collectorName
layoutPreferences::City
productClassification - ProductClassification
productClassification - PrimaryKey
productClassification::ModifiedBy
productClassification::ModificationTimestamp
productClassification::CreationTimestamp
productClassification::CreatedBy
Road Name Logos::Road Name
Road Name Logos - PrimaryKey
Road Name Logos::ModifiedBy
Road Name Logos::ModificationTimestamp
Road Name Logos::Image URL
Road Name Logos::CreationTimestamp
Road Name Logos::CreatedBy

To any and all others:

Please supply field names and other ideas where we can add more fields and/or tabs for data, and what functionality you would like to see!

Looks good, only missing field might be "New/Used".    Russ 

I love this

Greg I understand you are building this for Mac, will it be iPad/iPhone compatible? If it is count me in for one for my Mac and iPad/iPhone. It is nice to have your inventory handy when looking to purchase something. Keeps people like me from buying the same thing twice or three times. Old farts like me can be forgetful!!!

Is the Sequence Number the MFG STK number of not you might want to include that and maybe consider a category for Post War, MPC or is that what the intent of ERA is? Will the Era be a dropdown or free entry text? You also might want to consider current Value.

Looks great, but way beyond my creative skills.  My concern is that many, like me, are not "Mac" users.

Can that be over come using the "other" system?

This is looking great. If it works for iPad I would definitely use it.

I'm not sure how helpful this is or not, but my "model train notes" spreadsheet has the following columns.

Also, I was thinking of building something similar to what you are doing and had mocked up an ERD at one point or another, which might be interesting for you.  I basically split up the "product" from the "inventory", and had a couple lookup tables for brand and roadname, a few of the other fields could have also had lookups but I wasn't going overboard.

Best...Rich

@greg_08 posted:

If you want to send me your spreadsheet, I can incorporate the data fields from it and see where we get!

gms@thesousas.com

Greg, Thank you very much.  I will send it to you and see what happens.

@Murnane posted:

I'm not sure how helpful this is or not, but my "model train notes" spreadsheet has the following columns.

Also, I was thinking of building something similar to what you are doing and had mocked up an ERD at one point or another, which might be interesting for you.  I basically split up the "product" from the "inventory", and had a couple lookup tables for brand and roadname, a few of the other fields could have also had lookups but I wasn't going overboard.

Best...Rich

How would everyone want the tabs separated for entering/managing data?

What fields should be on each tab, and even, what tabs should exist?

I have apps on my phone that can identify plants or insects from photos taken with my phone. It would really cool if you could do something like that for our trains. Glad a photo of a train and have apps store it in the inventory.

@Madockawando posted:

I have apps on my phone that can identify plants or insects from photos taken with my phone. It would really cool if you could do something like that for our trains. Glad a photo of a train and have apps store it in the inventory.

Oh I totally agree. That would be AWESOME.

I will be starting a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds and gauge interest. I am trying to get the project budget down to $15,000 to $20,000, which includes app hosting, development license costs, developer listing costs, and web hosting for the app website. It will be a windows/Mac app as well as iPad and iPhone app.

If I can get funding above $12,500, but ideally $15,000, I think this app is worth developing.

What that means is we need 450 people interested in paying $30 to $40 for the apps.

Do we think there’s a market out there that large? I’m not sure if there is.

I will continue to work on the budget and share.

If anyone is interested in helping in the development of the app/data, or managing the Kickstarter campaign, please email me or send me a message here!

gms@thesousas.com

sent you email.

What ever happened to this idea?

I also have interest in this.

Nice  but ...  I'm waiting for an inventory app that I can camera-phone SCAN my inventory and auto-identify and then add-in each item to the database.  I know I have a long wait!

I'd put in a place for reporting marks alongside the road number...

Dunno if it's even feasible for me to switch to a different inventory application given how far I'm into the one I'm using, though it'd be nice to display photos in-app rather than launching a standalone viewer....like the one I'm using

---PCJ

Will this have an iPhone app as well as a Mac based app?   That would be really useful when shopping at Train shows.

If you need additional data sources for data scraping, I compiled links to all the major manufacturers product lists and catalogs here.  It's in the 5th post down.  Some are accessible to data scraping, others are PDFs of catalogs.  There are also 2 Excel sheets with Weaver data.  Some data is from archive.org.

These are all modern trains, late 90s to present.   Tandem Associates has a master index of Lionel postwar trains. Trainz Community also has tens of thousands of trains cataloged.

Hope this helps.

Bob

@paulp575 posted:

Only for a MAC? If so, I think you will be leaving out a lot of people as typically there are more Windows-based PCs than MACs.

He plans to have a multi-platform app as indicated in one of his posts:

I will be starting a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds and gauge interest. I am trying to get the project budget down to $15,000 to $20,000, which includes app hosting, development license costs, developer listing costs, and web hosting for the app website. It will be a windows/Mac app as well as iPad and iPhone app.

I would be interested also.

But greg 08 last visited this form on Jan 31, 2021, I hope everything is OK with the guy and his family.

I have my inventory in a program called TrainMinder. It is a windows app that was developed over 10 years ago. I run it on my MacBook Pro using Windows Vista in an emulator. But Microsoft has dropped support for Vista, which makes continued use a bit of a problem. Therefore, I would love to have a replacement app. I’d also buy the iPad and iPhone versions for reasons similar to those stated by others.

The author of TrainMinder used to show up at York, where he sold the software package. But he stopped showing up and I believe stopped work on the app over 10 years ago. However, you might want to look at some of the features in TrainMinder.

It also included lists of items he scrapped from internet sources, including eBay. Many of the requested fields in this thread were in TrainMinder. It includes a ‘duplicate’ feature for when the user wants to enter multiple similar items - like a group of freight cars with different numbers.

But it didn’t have any of the photo recognition features, which have become popular in the more recent past.  

It was a decent inventory program, but your mockup seems more attractive. I hope you’re still working on this project; I would be a supporter.

January 31, 2021............... should have seen that.

@RailRide posted:

I'd put in a place for reporting marks alongside the road number...

Dunno if it's even feasible for me to switch to a different inventory application given how far I'm into the one I'm using, though it'd be nice to display photos in-app rather than launching a standalone viewer....like the one I'm using

---PCJ

I created a spreadsheet and am slowly moving the inventory to a custom Microsoft Access database. I looked at a lot of inventory programs but none of them contained all the fields I wanted so I took those I wanted and put them into columns on the spreadsheet. On the database input screen, there is a thumbnail. Click on it and it opens a picture or several pictures - many are full-size filling the screen. This is what the input screen looks like:

@GMC posted:

He plans to have a multi-platform app as indicated in one of his posts:

I will be starting a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds and gauge interest. I am trying to get the project budget down to $15,000 to $20,000, which includes app hosting, development license costs, developer listing costs, and web hosting for the app website. It will be a windows/Mac app as well as iPad and iPhone app.

Sorry, missed that

@Murnane posted:

I'm not sure how helpful this is or not, but my "model train notes" spreadsheet has the following columns.

Also, I was thinking of building something similar to what you are doing and had mocked up an ERD at one point or another, which might be interesting for you.  I basically split up the "product" from the "inventory", and had a couple lookup tables for brand and roadname, a few of the other fields could have also had lookups but I wasn't going overboard.

Best...Rich

Wish I could figure out how to do that. My Microsoft Access database is what I think they call a "flat" database as opposed to what you are doing  - relational database.

I think someone mentioned wanting to scan key info into the app with the camera on their tablet/phone to avoid data entry.  That would be a must-have.  Entering the rest of the information and how to do it needs to be given a lot of thought.  I have tried lots of apps only to find that "neat" spinner made it nearly impossible to enter a number by moving it with my finger.  If you can't get the data in, the app isn't going to get used.

I think another key thing is to keep the data accessible.  It really needs to be exportable to a CSV or Excel format.  That way 10 years from now, if the app is no longer supported, you won't be stuck having to start from scratch.  Importing from Excel would be handy too...

My day job is in IT though I haven't been focused on application development for some time.  If the OP (or anyone else) has questions about software, I will do my best to help.

@Gandalf97 posted:

I think someone mentioned wanting to scan key info into the app with the camera on their tablet/phone to avoid data entry.  That would be a must-have.  Entering the rest of the information and how to do it needs to be given a lot of thought.

People have mentioned phones and iPads for this database.  I personally have a real problem trying to do something like this without a real keyboard.  Also, the point about the canned information is key.  I'd want to be able to enter a product number and have all the basic information filled in, typing in all that stuff for hundreds of items really makes this a non-starter for me!

One thing that hasn't been mentioned is inventory stickers.  It's probably a good idea to have a sticker on the item that matches the inventory # in the database, that way you know if you've already inventoried this item.

Some sort of feature that lets you print inventory stickers would be useful.  What I did was to purchase a bunch of dot stickers at an office supply store.  Each one is about the size of a pencil eraser and they came in probably 5 different colors.  When the box got entered in the inventory, the dot went on the box. 

One thing I kept trying to do was inventory individual pieces of sectional track so that I could tell exactly what I had in stock and what was already allocated to a layout.  An inventory app should be flexible enough to be able to track more than just engines and cars.

You don't need to print them, just get rolls of numbered stickers and enter the number into the program and use the matching sticker.  Much simpler than having to print the stickers!

the guy who started thus thread in January hopefully is still around, but if not I wonder whether any of the recent posts are meaningful or merely speculative.

@gunrunnerjohn posted:

People have mentioned phones and iPads for this database.  I personally have a real problem trying to do something like this without a real keyboard.  Also, the point about the canned information is key.  I'd want to be able to enter a product number and have all the basic information filled in, typing in all that stuff for hundreds of items really makes this a non-starter for me!

John

I agree that you need a computer app to do data entry.   I was thinking about an iPhone app used more for reading data.   Keeps me from buying the same item twice.   Not that it has ever happened . . .

And having the app pre-populate data is key.   You would want that feature for at least 90% maybe 95% of the products.

Bob

Does anyone remember TrainTracker?

I used to use it years ago, then they stopped updating the database. And so I stopped using it...  Not sure their reason, but could have been it was tied to other price guides?

I think they were venturing into tracking other collectables.

I downloaded TrainTracker some time ago, I was hoping they'd revive it and update it.  If they did, it would serve my purposes well.

TrainTracker was easy to use but don't hold your breathe on it coming back.