Inventorying Miscellaneous Computer Junk?

drewhearle writes "I'm sure lots of Slashdot readers act as technical support to friends and family. I do a lot of this myself and have collected all sorts of miscellaneous computer hardware over the years, such as cases, power supplies, older memory, hard drives, cables and the like. If you're like me, you have to dig through everything and look in various closets, drawers and boxes whenever you need something. What do you use for keeping track of your inventory? Is there a full-featured open-source or freeware package out there that actually works?" Read more for what he's looking for -- sounds like a useful niche.

drewhearle continues "Ideally I'd like an open-source solution with the following features:

A web-browser-based system (or something else with LAN connectivity) that would allow me to access the inventory from multiple computers

Something to indicate where each part is, i.e. "under bed" or "behind bookshelf" :)

A way to attach one or more photos to each item

Category organization, like "hard drives," "memory," or "cables". Subcategories would be nice too.

A "notes" field for each item, to save misc. information

Search functionality, so I could search by category or text-search any field.

I'm probably asking too much, but if there isn't [widely available] software out there like this, maybe somebody has developed something similar for themselves and would be willing to share."

Comments

hardware solution

[yarbo]

I use filing cabinets. Each drawer has a label on the front (drives, cables, fans, etc...). Each item goes in the designated drawer when I receive it. Cases go somewhere else.

OpenOffice

[BrookHarty]

I don't have that much software, but Openoffice should work. Just a simple spreadsheet.

Myself, I have a metal rack I bought. I keep a few boxes with cables on the middle racks, separated in 3 boxes by power/converters, misc, computer cables. Bottom rack has computer cases, routers. Top rack has HD's, CPU's, add in cards, modems. Works for me. And the rack only cost me 75 bux at the hardware store. Openoffice is free, so was the boxes.

Come to think about it, doing something native in Openoffice would be cool. Maybe use it's mysql db interface with openoffice. Could be quite the little learning experience.

Simple

[Zurd3]

Why not just using openoffice spreadsheet for it ? I mean, if it's just for home, it's all good.

If it would be for a business, a little mysql database with php would still be real simple to implement.

Why spreadsheets?

[Dibblah]

Why oh why is everyone's first reaction a spreadsheet?

Spreadsheets == handling of numbers
Databases == handling of data

Spreadsheets are not originally designed for searching or indexing. Spreadsheets have no good concept of interrelations.

Use the right tool for the job, for a change.

Re:Why spreadsheets?

[adolf]

Databases are cool, but they're almost useless by themselves. Are we supposed to grok SQL statements every day just to locate a SCSI adapter?

What front-end software would you suggest be used for a home-oriented inventory control system?

Or is learning Perl, Tcl, PHP, HTML, and/or C, along with SQL and the different various features of available engines a prerequisite for organizing one's computer cruft? What a weighty project to undertake.

I maintain a good bit of inventory/stuff at home. Here's how I do it:

A cheap medium-size (~4 foot) rollaway toolbox. Individual components (resistors, caps, LEDs), in one drawer. Fasteners get their own drawer. Bundled cables in one. Small PC-card based items like RAM and CPUs get their own drawer. Add-on cards in another. Large items (fans, odd case hardware) get their own drawer. Power supplies and the like end up in the cabinet in the bottom of the box.

When I run out of space in one of these compartments, I start throwing things away, in order of age. An interesting side effect of this is that other things tend to disappear at the same time - a 12" amber monochrome monitor is a lot less useful after you toss the 15-year-old full-length ISA control card for it.

Re:Why spreadsheets?

[AKnightCowboy]

Spreadsheets are not originally designed for searching or indexing. Spreadsheets have no good concept of interrelations.

Spreadsheets store data. Databases store data. ASCII text files store data. Use whatever you want, but don't go overly complex just for something as simple as cataloging a list of old crap. Tons of my "databases" are ASCII text files that I've just added onto over the years and search through with grep. Databases are a PITA to setup properly and a poorly setup database is no more efficient that a spreadsheet.

Re:Why spreadsheets?

[jayayeem]

Maybe not originally designed that way, but modern spreadsheets are very servicable flat databases. I've been enamored of the relational database model ever since I learned about it, but it is not the only one out there. For data without complex relationships, a flat file database, such as IMS or a spreadsheet is fine.

Personally, though, if there is no calculation to be done on the data I am putting in my flat file, I use the tables feature of whatever my word processor happens to be. Or just commas, sed, and awk if I happen to be feeling unixy that day (I can't to PERL without a reference book handy)

Interesting

[obeythefist]

While this sounds like an interesting project, I feel this is one of those things where a filing cabinet or a chest of drawers or any other combination of cupboards, carboard boxes or cheap plastic containers, a bit of masking tape and a marker pen would probably do a better job.

I'd say most hardware types, myself included because I have this problem, would only keep enough stuff that a bit of organisation would do wonders for.

Get all your ISA cards and put them in one drawer, and label it "ISA Cards". Same for the stack of old IDE hard drives. Repeat until done. What I find handy is to also label each drive with a set of parameters in one uniform place (don't cover the little airhole thingy).

Neaten up the cables you want to keep and wrap them in masking tape. Write the specifications on the tape if you like - "CAT-5, 5M". Put them all into the one drawer/bucket/cupboard.

Making a database or using an application to handle the database sounds like a pretty complex operation, I think it would just be one more thing to worry about. Better to keep your stuff organised logically, which in turn would make you more organised. Adding a database into the equation will just complicate things even more.

Sometimes the low tech fix is the best fix.

Use a Wiki

[KlaymenDK]

There have been several suggestions on how to manage the physical side of it. Me, I just put it where I have room for it (and where the wife won't object).

The inventory management, though, is rather easy. Use a wiki! That's what I do.
I have a drawer in my desk for all the small stuff (HD or smaller) and a big box in the attic. Then I use my family's TWiki site to maintain a table of what I have and where it might be -- along with a rather long list of who in and outside my family have which computers, and exactly what's in 'em. This is a good solution as long as you are certain that everyone who meddles with those computers also update the listing (and, sadly, nobody but myself is doing the meddling).

* Accessible from any networked computer: check.
* Ability to add any number of notes and attachments: check.
* Scalability in terms of users and inventory stock: check.
* Ease of maintenance: Easy.
* Ease of setup/installation: Moderate; easy if you know your way around a web server.

Anything I forgot?