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A Barcode Driven Kitchen and Grocery List?
Crazy Brian asks: "I have envisioned, for some time now, having a 3Com Audrey with a barcode scanner in my kitchen, where I can scan in items as I put them away, then scan them again as I use them. Barcode information would be stored on my MySQL server, and an inventory would be updated. I could then generate a shopping list, or link it to a database of recipes, to find out what I can have for dinner tonight. The closest thing I have found is the ShopWizard from Symbol, which only runs under Windows. Is there anything out there for Linux? I hope it can use the upcdatabase to find unknown barcodes. Is there any group interest in creating something like this, assuming nothing already exists?" Icepick's Trashbin is a simple application built on this concept, but wouldn't knowing exactly what is in your cabinets and having a ready-made grocery list be a useful feature for any kitchen?
People have been talking about this since the Apple II.
And computers have almost gotten to where they can realize their full potential in the kitchen-keeping track of recipes, which was a justification for many computers to sneak into homes in those days.
This thanksgiving is the first time I used the computer to help in the kitchen-- not because I'm very anal (I'm very bad at being anal) but because it was easier than any other way. I had emailed out the menu to my mom who came to visit from out of state, and when we were cooking, I had the laptop there on the counter (I have a lot of counter space, so it was convenient and not in the way) and would mark things off and make notes as we made them, and check on line for preparation tips when questions came up.
I'd kind of like RFID tags in the fridge-- there are things you need when cooking at the holidays that you don't realize aren't there, or they've been in the fridge so long you might be afraid to use them. And it would be nice to be able to slap an rfid on leftovers (or have it built into the container) and have the fridge keep track of how old they are. I don't even want it to track what they are- that would require effort. I've tried marking them with a marker, but I'm not anal enough and it stops after a day or two.
The spice cabinet is another place for RFID tags-- I have a lot of spices, including many obscure ones, and I'm too lazy to organize them in the very large spice cabinet. I'd like to be able to pull up a list of what's in there to compare to recipes.
This is something my friend is very interesed in.
:(
It's quite hard for a blind person to tell eg "Catfood" vs "baked beans" or "Chicken noodles" vs "Extra-hot Thai noodles". The plan was that his wife would scan each product as she puts them away and record a short audio description. Verne can then scan cans and packets while she's at work and sort out a non-spicy, non-catfood lunch for himself.
I wrote a script for this, but then the computer had an accident so I'm going to have to write it all over again
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Indeed, it'd be nice to have this for spices.
Management by itself seems like a why-bother issue to me. What I'd like is to have integration between this little ingredient database- including dry spices, perishables, frozen stuff, canned goods and everthing else- and a recipesdatabase, whether it's my personal list of recipes or something like the awesome allrecipes.com and webtender.com. I'd love to be able to go onto allrecipes and click a button labelled "give me a 5-course meal with what i have!" and have it generate those 5 courses based on my taste (derived from my ratings of other recipes on allrecipes.com, perhaps), and ratings other folks have given it, all using the materials i have already. Or perhaps, leave me only buying fresh rosemary and chicken breasts, etc. Having all this data is next to worthless for me... But *using* this data would be great.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
I have often thought of this too. Except in my version it combines a recipe database, an inventory database, and a barcode database.
Besides the obvious maintenance of a database of items in your cupboard, it maintains a database of all items in your house. For those of us who have home-owners/renters insurance, this database is invaluable when it comes to loss replacement claims.
But the number one reason I want to get this implemented is that often my wife and I have no idea what to fix for dinner, even though we have a pantry full of choices. I have also seen once or twice when fresh items go bad (like potatoes, or apples) because they were behind something else.
The system I envision ties in recipes with the food inventory so that I can simply say "show me what I can fix for dinner", and it would go through the database of items on hand, and suggest recipes containing those items. They would be catagorized of course so that I could say something like "I'm in the mood for italian tonight, show me what italian dishes I can fix." and the system would oblige me.
With the inventory system, it can also tell me that I have items that need to be used sooner rather than later, and suggest items to fix containing the goods that are about to expire.
Of course right now, my wife makes up a 'two-week menu' and we shop according to what is needed on that menu, but we generally have plenty of staple items on hand. This system would allow us to reduce the number of times we buy cream-of-mushroom soup. (we must have about 20 of those cans in the cupboard now.) It would also allow us to buy "only what we need" when we go.