Maddyhome Forums

Before I list my enhancement request, I must say that of all the inventory applications I looked at or down-loaded and tested - yours is by far the best. Having the option of containers, look-ups, auto-fill, actions and more, really set you application above the rest -Thank you!

Have you considered adding barcoding reading to the application? I have several barcode scanners that I use with my Delicious Library application and there are a number of free (or not free) 2-D/QR barcoding readers for the iPhone and free printing applications on the web. It would be cool to be able to turn barcode scanning on (i.e. turn camera on) from the application to read the QR (or other) barcode on an item or container and have the MyStuff application bring me to that item or container. Most of the QR readers I've seen let the user pre-select the desired action (open URL, SMS, Call, Email, Contact, Map, etc.), in this case it might be updating a selected field to an autofill. For example, I've created a 'Shipping Status' field that uses the 'status' lookup (unpacked, packed, shipped, received, missing) and if I was at the Post Office shipping the containers, I might want to scan the boxes with the action of setting the item to "Shipped" or if I was receiving a number of containers or a DVD I lent out, I might want the scan action to set the "Status" to "Received" or "Returned". I mention the QR barcodes because the iPhone can read them and they can hold a lot of information:

QR Code data capacity (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_Code):
Numeric only Max. 7,089 characters
Alphanumeric Max. 4,296 characters
Binary (8 bits) Max. 2,953 bytes

A few of many iPhone QR examples on youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9pB-i0xQKs&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihdn8XDWebE&feature=related

I have 4 QR readers on my iPhone but one works much better and even auto takes the photo/scan when the QR code is in focus (vs manually clicking the photo button once you think you have the barcode in the box).

Thanks again for a very cool and extremely useful application,
Julia

Julia,

Thanks for your kind words about My Stuff. Just to let you know I'll be sending an update to Apple tomorrow. There are some great new features coming in this next release.

As for bar code reading - I have had one other request for such a feature. It is on my list of possible features to add in a future update. I have a rather long TODO list of features and improvements for My Stuff and one of my other apps - iLogger. I will definitely look into such a feature but to be honest it's not the highest on the list. So it will be some time before bar code scanning might be part of My Stuff.

Thanks for the links. This will help in my research when the time comes.

In the meantime I hope you enjoy My Stuff and please feel free to offer any other ideas or suggestions. Part of the reason my TODO list is so long is from great feedback from customers.

Thanks.

Hi Rick,

when this barcoding suggestions pops on your TODo list, in additional to CR codes I was also looking at iCarte; RFID reader/writer for the iPhone, not yet released (www.wdi.ca).

Best, Julia

Thanks for the info.

A Bar-code scanner for registering my items would be very usefull. Like scanning the bar-code on each DVD when registering it, to get up name, category etc for items without having to type it in, but of course an option to create a new item if the barcode doesn't exist. I suppose it would require som ekind of centralized database, though.

Thanks. Barcode support is much higher on my list now but I haven't even researched options yet.

I have been looking for home inventory software for a while and am very interested in this one. However.....I just went through and did my entire inventory of books and movies very quickly through MyLibrary which includes scanning by integrating RedLaser. It was so quick and easy!! If you were able to add barcode scanning capability, it would definitely give you a huge advantage over the other home inventory apps!!

I've begun my research into adding barcode support. I will be adding this feature very soon to the major new version of My Stuff I am working on.

Thanks.

Glad to hear your adding this to your todo list.

Here is my wish list for barcoding.
Allow user to define which fields would leverage barcode scan data. Once defined user could choose field on new/existing item and if barcode enabled the scan bracket would appear to enable scan and capture of data into selected field.

On Addition of new item the primary field for me would be the item number which today looks to be custom field. I would scan the item number into field and define other attributes and then attach barcode label to item. This allows me to tie physical inventory with your database.

It would also be nice if you could rename the photos the same as item number so they are in sync. Example:

Item number 123
Image 1=123_1.jpg
Image 2=123_2.jpg
etc.

Thanks for a great application and I appreciate your consideration of these request.
Tommy

Thanks for the ideas. I'll see what I can do.