Managing your collections

[wottle]

Just wondering how others manage your collections. I started with sticky notes on the devices with notes, then moved to a spreadsheet, then I decided I wanted to have a better way to do it, so I went about building myself a system to do it. I am not a web developer, so it's not well written, but it basically includes a database, a web server, and an API server for interacting with the DB. It currently allows me to see all my devices, organized by category, along with details about the device. Additionally, I can add photos and notes to each device.

I may have borrowed the idea for the title from a site...

Instead of relying on sticky notes on devices, I plan to create QR code labels to stick on each device that links to the detail page. This will allow me to quickly see all my notes and history for a device when needed.

The information I collect probably needs to be better organized, as well as having fields for additional information I am not currently collecting (but should). I still have some UI improvements (improve how the detail page works, shortcuts buttons for "I used this device today" to update the last powered on button, set a default thumbnail for a device to show in the list page, etc. I also plan to add the ability for me to track my purchases / spending through a visual of some sort. I will also add the ability to add and prioritize to-dos for the devices / collection. I often think "I really need to remove the PRAM battery from X" and then forget until months later.

Is this something others would be interested in? As I said, I'm not a web developer, so it is written in angularJS with an express backend and I'm sure it is a mess. However, if I could make it presentable, as well as figure out how to set up a public set of docker images with the empty database, the web server, and the API server, others might be able to deploy it themselves. I'm probably weeks away from this being releasable, but was really just wondering if others might find it useful.

 

[Patrick]

i basically don't. but I thought it would be nice to do something like what you are doing.

like what price did a get the item at. if the PRAM battery is removed etc....

 

[wottle]

Yeah, when I had a handful of devices, I could remember, but now 3-4 years in, with 142 devices (I just added a count to my list page to figure that out), I have trouble remembering what I've done to various machines, and what state they are in. I try to keep all my devices functional, but I do have some parts machines and others that I haven't yet figured out. I also want to make it easy for my family to be able to get information on devices in case something happened to me, I'd rather them try to sell / keep some of the more rare devices. No need to donate many thousands of dollars to GoodWill because you can't tell the worth of a Lisa from a LC II. I do have an "Estimated value" field, that I may see about revisiting.

Another idea I have, but might be prohibitive to do, is to pre-populate some of the fields with the default for a machine. If Everymac.com had an API, it would be easy, but I'm not sure I want to have to create and populate a database table full of all the specs for every Mac made. I'd basically be recreating the everymac website...

 

[Volvo242GT]

Looks good.

Lately, I've been using MacTracker on my MBP to inventory my machines. Back when I had my old iPhone 4s (and, previously, 4), I used the old iCollectStuff app that @krye over at the other forums had created. Alas, he lost interest in keeping it updated, so it never got transferred to my 6s or a newer phone.

 

[Certificate of Excellence]

I’ve been meaning to build a website for my collection and anything else I want to put in there. I figure I’ll eventually get around to it one of these days. I pretty much have the majority of my collection committed to memory as I try to keep it relatively tidy, in one room and my garage.

Once I build a site, it would be nice to add a searchable database component to it like yours.


Nice way to keep your collection organized in one’s head. I especially like the notes field where customized notes fields.

 

[Patrick]

a collection of random thoughts
--------

I have heard of some people using Hypercard for this.

I thought it could be cool to try it with FileMaker pro. Not that thats the BEST tool for the job. Just it fits with the theme of the project.


the way you did it is probably more practical / useful.

I am not a web developer,

thats how it always starts...
but then Boom. you are. and have been for a long time.

so it's not well written,

You should see some of the code I have to maintain at work.
even actual web developers. (or backend developers...) can .. ... well lets just say there are deadlines that one has to meet sometimes.....

 

[wottle]

Looks good.

Lately, I've been using MacTracker on my MBP to inventory my machines. Back when I had my old iPhone 4s (and, previously, 4), I used the old iCollectStuff app that @krye over at the other forums had created. Alas, he lost interest in keeping it updated, so it never got transferred to my 6s or a newer phone.

Yeah, there's some apps for doing collection management. But they all lack what I think is a key component, the ability to generate a QR code to link back to the entry from the physical device (that I can tell). I want my workflow to be - grab a device to work on, scan the QR code to pull up the device info, add notes to the device based on what I did, maybe add some relevant photos. Unfortunately, to do that, you need a server of some kind running with a static url.

 

[wottle]

a collection of random thoughts
--------

I have heard of some people using Hypercard for this.

I thought it could be cool to try it with FileMaker pro. Not that thats the BEST tool for the job. Just it fits with the theme of the project.


the way you did it is probably more practical / useful.



thats how it always starts...
but then Boom. you are. and have been for a long time.


You should see some of the code I have to maintain at work.
even actual web developers. (or backend developers...) can .. ... well lets just say there are deadlines that one has to meet sometimes.....

Yeah, while it would be cool to do on one of the vintage machines - I want the redundancy of my NAS storage, and the accessibility of a web server for the linking from a QR code on my phone. In theory, I could host the database, web server, and API server on one of my G4s, but I'm worried about performance. I suspect my NAS is a magnitude faster, and certainly much cheaper to run 24/7.

 

[ctb]

I have been using Airtable online. It works via a browser on desktop and has iPhone, iPad and Android apps. It can use the camera for barcode scanning. The only downside I have found is that doesn't print very well to my label printer. Oh and the fact that you are giving someone else your data and they can pull the rug any time.

 

[wottle]

I have been using Airtable online. It works via a browser on desktop and has iPhone, iPad and Android apps. It can use the camera for barcode scanning. The only downside I have found is that doesn't print very well to my label printer. Oh and the fact that you are giving someone else your data and they can pull the rug any time.

I would love to use Airtable, given that it seems to be very flexible and would even provide me the ability to store images and a comment stream on my devices. I'm really worried about their ability to keep it free / functional. The other problem I'd have is the amount of images I want to store would quickly exceed the free tier's 1GB. I just put in my current collection a photos for a small portion of it and I'm already at 900MB. If their $20/month tier was $5 per month I might do it. I wish I had posed this question before starting to build my app, because I feel like I'm going to keep building it and spend a bunch of time on it when there are some really good, dynamic online database systems that probably would suit my needs... Live and learn...

OK, so I just found there is an opensource product similar to AirTable called BaseRow. Deploying the docker image now to see how well it does.

 

[ctb]

I would love to use Airtable, given that it seems to be very flexible and would even provide me the ability to store images and a comment stream on my devices. I'm really worried about their ability to keep it free / functional. The other problem I'd have is the amount of images I want to store would quickly exceed the free tier's 1GB. I just put in my current collection a photos for a small portion of it and I'm already at 900MB. If their $20/month tier was $5 per month I might do it. I wish I had posed this question before starting to build my app, because I feel like I'm going to keep building it and spend a bunch of time on it when there are some really good, dynamic online database systems that probably would suit my needs... Live and learn...

OK, so I just found there is an opensource product similar to AirTable called BaseRow. Deploying the docker image now to see how well it does.

Please report back on what you find.

 

[3lectr1c]

I track everything on my website, all done manually. No fancy databases or automated entry. Probably inefficient, but 100% under my control and fun to manage. Each item has a short summary on the main page, then a dedicated pages with specs, operational status, and images. It's still WIP right now. I have pages for nearly every computer, but am missing full image galleries for most.

This is all public here: https://macdat.net/electric_lounge/my_collection.html

 

[Mu0n]

I did this:

 

[wottle]

Please report back on what you find.

Baserow looks promising. It features much of the capabilities of AirTable. Two things it lacks - a native iOS app (probably could live with, given the web interface is responsive. Not as nice as the AirTable native app, but probably good enough. The second thing I found could be a dealbreaker for me - it does not allow comments on entries. In order to get that, you need a $5/mo subscription for their "premium" features. Seems odd to do a subscription given all the compute and storage is on my own machines. I'll be playing a bit more with it, as well as seeing if I can create shareable templates to make it easier for others to get started.

Also, continuing to play with my own app to see if I can improve it. I'll likely throw together an iOS app as it should be pretty easy given that I made all data accessible via the APIs.

 

[wottle]

OK, I found yet another Airtable alternative. NoCoDB is promising in that it seems to support nearly everything Baserow does, but it offers row commenting in its free tier. The part I can't determine, is whether there is a dependency on their company. It's also able to be deployed self hosted via docker, but I can't figure out from their documentation whether it will continue to work if their company goes under, or if they decide to start charging for features later. I don't believe it will have issues, but it's an area of concern.

I'm trying to see if I can use a no-code app platform, like Budibase to add an app on top to make the viewing and editing of devices better. The mobile version of NoCoDB doesn't seem to allow for entry of comments, which is how I was planning to track notes. It also doesn't allow me to enter historical notes, so I'd lose a bit of the history of when things were done. I'll let everyone know how the investigation progresses.

 

[phunguss]

I have a excel file with 30+ rows of Hackintosh's and another with 30+ rows of real Apple devices, but the collection keeps growing. I was thinking of trying MAMP and OpenWiki, but it seems way too complicated for what I need. I would like all the details like EveryMac.com, so I can compare the baseline to my exact configurations, or something like Apple-History.com where I could choose by year/family/cpu/etc. We are cataloging history with our collections, but we need to preserve the list as well.

Just found this: https://pimcore.com/en/platform

I am thinking that I would create my catalog with a local MAMP copy, then use SiteSucker or something to create a static (non-php database) version in plain HTML to upload to an online webpage.

 

[Patrick]

yeah it would be neat if there was an API for like everymac, lowendmac, or something. where you can query it and just get a json dump of a specific model.

 

[wottle]

Actually, I just found out every Mac has an API, but it’d be pretty expensive to do over time. Also, I’d have to be careful about how often I look up information. I’d have to download the info when a device was added versus doing a realtime lookup every time you view a device, which would be ideal. I might start compiling my own info and see if I could come up with a reasonable set of data. Then when you add a device, it would automatically populate with the information on the stock config for the device. Then you’d just override it with any upgrades done to the machine. Given that information isn’t changing over time, it might not be terrible.