Can anyone recommend a simple to inventory program?
The reason why I ask is last night it took me 7 hours to figure out what I needed to order from mouser. It was not fun trying to figure out what I had on hand, what was needed, ect…
To give you an idea of my needs - I need to keep track of about 1500 parts, and be able to group them into 30 assembles.
My budget is $0. So, even an old dos program would be fine by me. Just as long as it works.
(BTW - I don’t want to roll my own in excel or access)
george graves:
Can anyone recommend a simple to inventory program?
The reason why I ask is last night it took me 7 hours to figure out what I needed to order from mouser. It was not fun trying to figure out what I had on hand, what was needed, ect…
To give you an idea of my needs - I need to keep track of about 1500 parts, and be able to group them into 30 assembles.
My budget is $0. So, even an old dos program would be fine by me. Just as long as it works.
(BTW - I don’t want to roll my own in excel or access)
Any suggestions? Advice?
you could try openerp (www.openerp.org) may be a bit of overkill though. there is an electronics inventory module for it
Wiki-like parts database with links to datasheets and references for all component distributors. Links to open hardware projects using the parts (“I want to check how people are using this”).
Each user creates an account on the site and can create their own inventory using their own parts definitions or those from the collaborative wiki. Can flag parts as “general purpose” and specify the optimal quantity for restocking.
BOM manager to create and publish BOMs + keeping track of how many units of a particular device we have stock for.
Function to create order csvs automatically for digikey or farnell (“order the parts I need for 10 units of this device” ; “restock the parts I have flagged as general purpose”).
Geo search. Find people around me who might have a part I’m looking for.
I don’t think it’s that hard… Add to the wishlist… Maybe I might end up doing it
^Wow. I think you are on to something. I didn’t even think of a web based application!
I’ll throw in a couple of things I would like:
slim interface that would load fast and easy on the eyes. My eyes are tried of staring at bright white text feilds.
bar code support that you could read your own bar codes AND mouse/digikey/ect bar codes. I bet on each bag I get from mouser has a lot of data that I wouldn’t need to hand enter in.
I found an old CueCat barcode scanner in my attic and started in on a way to inventory my parts. I took the approach of just using a flat file database using Excel. I purchased a large number of ESD bags from ULine and put my own barcodes on each bag. Not sure it will make life any easier. As blogradio mentioned, once you forget to decrement a part when you use it, you are screwed.
I’ve written a program that is similar, to better suit my needs with mysql as the database engine. If I get a huge push for something I could possible make something for cheap ($40 bucks) with a free version with limitation. Does anyone know of something out there that you can actually pay for?
I’m kind of late to the party on this, but you mentioned you use Mouser. Mouser is my best friend when it comes to keeping BOM’s straight for each product. Will it track your inventory? No, but you can keep a nice online listing of BOM’s for each project/product. I have invested a minimal amount of money over the last ten years on various invoicing and tracking software and I found that the NCH products were the best option for me. Not too expensive, but I know you are looking for a free option, so it’s just a suggestion if you ever get to the point where you want to spend some money.
Overall, I have found a good combination of Mouser’s BOM manager, some good homegrown spreadsheet systems and my NCH software has kept me on track 99% of the time.
Excel spreadsheets are very commonly used for BOM management in industry. You can specify as many parameters about a part as you like, you can do on the fly calculations for cost estimates, you can put in the sizes and pad counts for manufacturing estimates, you can insert notes, you can assign hyperlinks to datasheets and part sources.
I use spreadsheets to communicate BOMs to and from PCBA companies. If you don’t give them a spreadsheet at the beginning, they’ll probably put it all in a spreadsheet and send it back to you for review anyway.
OpenOffice and Libre Office are free, extremely powerful tools; the spreadsheet programs have so much more untapped ability than typing numbers in cells and adding some of them up. I use Excel to design SMPS and certain analog circuits. Once you crystallize a design down to a set of functions, it’s really easy to adjust parameters to come up with something for different applications or available parts.
I’ve just deployed a web app that i created to help me keep track of my inventory. I figured why not share it with others. So i’ve added the login function (so everyone who signed up has their own inventory, duh
note: after you signup, click on link in email to confirm. (and don’t worry, i’m not gonna spam you
Interface is very basic and not stellar looking yet. I plan to keep on improving it as time permits (i have a long list of improvements and features i would like to add, and im of course open for suggestions)
Then there’s inFlow which is free for up to 100 parts, after that it’s $299 for unlimited, and $499 for the version with all the bells and whistles. As far as the OP’s request, inFlow wouldn’t work because its free version can’t manage more than 100 parts, and the unlimited one is $299 … both criterias will fail.
But it is a nice piece of software. So much so I’ve considered, for a brief moment, to write an open source, web based version of sorts for myself. But I haven’t revisited that idea … since I first installed inFlow to play with.
Parts-in-Place is a [simple BOM & inventory web app that has been specifically designed for use with electronics parts, aiming to address this very pain expressed by George:
george graves:
The reason why I ask is last night it took me 7 hours to figure out what I needed to order from mouser. It was not fun trying to figure out what I had on hand, what was needed, etc…
Ciiva is another cloud based electronic components and [bill of materials management solution. The free version has a limit of starting as 3000 components, and up to 10,000 components if you inviting friends to join it. Guess it is enough for building several dozen big BOMs.
