InventoryDifferent - Managing your vintage device collection

[wottle]

I've been collecting vintage Apple hardware for a few years now and kept running into the same problem: nothing out there really fits how collectors actually think about their stuff. Spreadsheets are clunky, generic inventory apps don't seem to capture the types of things I care about in my collection and don't streamline my workflow like I'd prefer, and most tools assume you're a business tracking assets, not someone who just wants to know where they put their Macintosh SE or whether they'd replaced the caps in it.

So I built one. It's called InventoryDifferent and I'm looking for people to kick the tires before I announce it more widely.

What it does:

• Track your collection with photos, notes, maintenance logs, and condition history
• Works across a web admin dashboard, a public storefront (if you want to sell), and a native iOS app
• Ships with 280+ pre-built device templates for common Apple hardware, so you're not typing "Motorola 68000" from scratch every time
• Has an AI chat assistant that can answer questions about your collection ("which of my machines haven't been powered on in over a year?")
• Supports English, German, French, and Spanish, for now
• Custom fields let you track whatever matters to you that isn't built in
• Only a name and category is required to add a device. Fill in the rest as you go or need
• Asset tagging for devices and locations with a scanner built into the iOS app and web app for quick device lookups (can also scan serial number bar codes)

It's self-hosted via Docker, so your data stays yours. Setup takes about 5 minutes if you're comfortable with a terminal or have a helper like portainer.

I built this primarily for my own use, but designed it to be useful for a range of collectors -- not just Apple, and not just computers. Whether you track 10 machines or 500, it should scale reasonably well.

If you want to give it a try, the repo and setup instructions are at [github link]. I'd genuinely love feedback on what's missing, what's confusing, or what doesn't match how you actually manage a collection.

Availble now in GitHub: https://github.com/wottle/InventoryDifferent2

Thanks for taking a look. And if you do install, let me know what you think. What doesn't make sense, what could be optimized, what is missing, etc.



I also recently re-designed the iOS device detail screen to look a bit nicer, while adding quick buttons for transitioning a device in its "lifecycle" (e.g. from "For Sale" to "Pending Sale" or "Sold".

 

[RetroViator]

Like some others, I’ve been dabbling with Airtables, but I love the idea of something purpose built for our hobby. I’ll check this out. Thanks!

 

[wottle]

Like some others, I’ve been dabbling with Airtables, but I love the idea of something purpose built for our hobby. I’ll check this out. Thanks!

Yeah, I had air tables, but I feel like some of the things I did most frequently were kind of a hassle, and I also didn't like it being a SaaS. I have too many images to use the free tier, and even if I could have squeezed under the limits, there's the uncertainty of knowing it could shut down at any time, or raise the rates, etc. I prefer something I manage and can grow without concerns over cost. But hopefully I can keep improving it into something others can use to keep tabs on their collection. I've got some other ideas for improving the app and building other services around it to augment the whole experience, but I need to wrap up my work on this first.

 

[wottle]

One of my goals was to be able to show off my collection in a way that is a bit more narrated than a list of devices with photos and specs, etc. So I added another docker container to host a showcase for your app. It's slightly customizable, but fairly limited at the moment. It allows you to create "journeys" with chapters that allow a bit of story-telling around the devices you have. I basically threw together some sample journeys just to test the functionality and there's still a decent amount of tweaking I need to complete, but it's started.

If you want to check it out and provide feedback, you can see my instance at https://thearchive.inventorydifferent.com/

I need to make a good space for taking professional looking product shots for my devices, but for now I used the AI image generation in the app to try to make the somewhat consistent.




Curious on everyone's feedback on this. I plan to go back and create better journeys once I get all the kinks worked out. I also need to verify the data I have on my devices because I'm sure I've entered some wrong, relied too much on search, etc.

 

[jeffburg]

@wottle thanks for sharing! I was eager to see more. This is absolutely fantastic!

 

[jeffburg]

And now I am so curious what happened to InventoryDifferent1

 

[wottle]

And now I am so curious what happened to InventoryDifferent1

Ha, it was my first attempt and I decided to scrap it and work from scratch. I may have some conversion code in there that was used for me to migrate from the old system to the new. I shared screenshots of it back on another post.



Looking back now, the design (I was trying to go for a retro aesthetic) does look like it was built in the late 90's. Unfortunately, it looks like it was built in the late 90's by a 10 year old.