Adventures in code

This is the first hurdle that anyone is going to run into sooner or later.
How the heck do I know what things I have and not get overwhelmed in the proces ?

If you’re just starting with one game and are obsessive with tracking your own inventory it’s easy. You open up your spreadsheet, enter whatever details you need and get on with your life.

Most of us aren’t that obsessive compulsive, which means the only time you start to wonder if you should do something about that is when something/someone else forces you to.

Be this as it may …we should do this quick and easy, because we’ve got better things to do than enter data we may not need or (even worse) data that we’ve already had to enter before.

Grab a box from your pile … and enter as little detail as possible in order to get on with life. At least that’s the idea. There’s nothing stopping you from adding more details.

Things we can do that could save time  :

1. scan a barcode
2. scan a QR code
3. scan a NFC tag

A lot of products can be identified by a barcode and sometimes you may even find a QR code.

Most books have a barcode that identifies the ISBN used to identify it. Boxed games sold in retail shops also tend to have barcodes for a similar purpose (EAN is the standard in Europe).

However not every tiny company can afford to have barcodes added to their products, because they only ever sell them from their own webshop.

These codes are not unique, because they merely indicate the product. Scanning them (or entering the numbers that are underneath them) should make it easy to enter details without the user having to do this themselves.

Here’s where there’s both good and bad news.

Good : there are websites that have a ginormous database of barcodes.
Bad : these are not free services (I’ve seen quotes for 99$/month)

If there’s a free trial I might have a temporary solution.
I suspect that the costs are due to the fact that these services are meant for (big) webshops who can afford the expense. Overall this makes it a feature that I can’t add to a hobby project that is supposed to to be free to use (and certainly no monthly costs)

Net result : nice to have, but it will only help with data entry and not identification  (how many boxes of Orks do I have and should I buy more ?).

With modern technology comes modern solutions : NFC tags
If you’ve seen the Nintendo Amiibo toys or Skylanders then you’ve seen them.

The best thing ?
These have a unique identifier as well as a few bytes to store data if need be and your phone can scan them.

The not so good news ?
You need to add them yourself, which is trivial (some tags come as stickers).
Android phones don’t always have NFC reader capability, so you may need to check if you can do before jumping down that rabbit hole. Apple being Apple means that they do have it but there are some restrictions that may result in tags not being read.

One thing to be aware of is that they may not work on metal surfaces, but there are solutions for that. It does make those tags a bit more expensive. Trial and error may be needed.

More background info :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-field_communication

Once I get this sorted I will provide details of the products tested and used in my setup. I’ve already noticed that my phone needs to be on top of a tag to read them, whereas the usb-based NFC reader/writer on my pc can detect them within several centimeters of the device.

If I know I’m buying a new boxed set of orks then I can enter some of the data already, right ?

Consider this a wish list or a shopping list.
Enter as much data as you want, but mark the thing so we know that we don’t have it (yet).

Advantage : time spent here saves time later …

In theory you could prepare an entire catalog this way, but no sane person has time for that kind of work. A possible solution would be to find a way to share this data, but it would require an (optional) on-line feature and a way to prevent duplicates. I probably will be creating my own data set based on my collection, because it will be useful during testing.