Hey everyone,
I’m looking for a system that:
- I can self host
- Is slim, because I don’t have beefy hardware (Intel J5040, 32GB RAM, shared by all VMs/containers)
- can be used to create an inventory of all the tech/hardware that I have in my house (not exclusively IT, I also wasn’t to track things like warranty for my chainsaws and the like)
- does take at least the device make/model, serial number (for insurance cases) and warranty dates
- is not some kind of enterprise-how-many-items-of-this-article-do-i-have-in-stock-things, because that seems to be the only thing I seem to be able to find, and they neither match my use case nor do they seem to be lightweight enough.
… and honestly, I don’t even know where to start looking. Do you guys have any recommendations?
Of course, I could just use a spreadsheet, but where’s the fun in that?
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+1 for netbox
Snipe-it is a bit overkill but it’s pretty good.
Grocy also has an inventory tracker. I’m not sure how different it is tho
NocoDB.
LibreOffice Calc
+1
This is a problem a simple spreadsheet is perfectly adequate for.Indeed. What you are looking for is a spreadsheet.
Don’t overcomplicate things.
its just a spreadsheet, until you want to track what happens to it over time. maintenance, failures, …
NocoDB is pretty fun if you want an AirTable-like.
I use homebox and it has been good for my home usecase. I have put qr codes on boxes to easily check contents from my phone
While I do agree on the general sentiment to not overcomplicate things, homebox seems rather easy to use and intuitive.
Being able to create qr code to put them on boxes and also have them directly accessible through the web interface is neat !
However, there’s one thing that’s quite cumbersome… There isn’t a one button move everything to a new location. Someone already posted a feature request and got some traction :) so cross fingers this going be implemented in the near futur !!
Yes, I agree, batch moving stuff is important. I haven’t had that problem yet, so let’s hope they add it before I move or something 😅
Also using Homebox. Quite intuitive UI, not too many features but also not too few. For instance you can upload the receipts, manuals, etc for euch equipment, etc
Thanks, that sounds really nice!
This might be an unpopular opinion/solution but even for two small size sister companies we are doing inventory in a version controlled markdown file 🫣
a version controlled markdown file
There’s a lot of genius in this idea …
Honestly, a spreadsheet would be fine for this? I’m not super familiar with what an inventory management system does tho, so maybe it does things beyond what a spreadsheet can do.
Not at all, I like
.md, and I’m familiar with Git. A spreadsheet is not something that I would throw into Git, but an.md…I use markdown too, except I keep the markdown file in a self-hosted wiki (wiki.js)
It’s versioned and accepts git as a backend
That is the reason Markdown and Git are used for a lot shenanigans these days. Knowledge bases, awesome-lists, documentations. You name it.
If you got the right tools (sphinx, typora, mkdocs, …obsidian) you got a powerful toolchain.
Simplest possible solution, Occam’s Inventory 😄
I use markdown extensively, but I’m honestly not fond of its tables function (which I assume you use for this purpose?). It works, but it’s a bit static in my experience. Do you run up against the same, or is it actually an advantage in your use case?
We’re using headings for different types of inventory (hardware/office items/…) and then a block of subheading, bulletpoint combination (serialnumber, date of acquisition, whereabouts,…) for each item and associated item.
The toc is generated automatically and helps browsing through.
Even simpler, I love it! 👍
Wut
I’m suggesting HomeBox. https://demo.homebox.software/ Small, selfhosted and centered around home use.
I’d just roll your own with either a spreadsheet or a relational database depending on how fancy you want to get.
In fact, I’ve done that for comic books.
Snipe-IT and Shelf.nu are two of the most popular ones.
Maybe also consider just kicking one out yourself with NocoBase or something like that though.
HA, the term I was looking for is even on their website: “Asset Management Software”. My non-native speaker ass didn’t come up with this.
Thank you, I will check those out.
Though it sounds interesting for tinkering, I’m probably not doing down the NoCode route. You make it, you maintain it forever, and I don’t have that kind of time.
There’s a couple of options.
I’ve used Grocy. It’s not intended for that particular use case but it would work. More for Grocery management.
Might want to check out https://awesome-selfhosted.net/
Oh yeah, I was planning to deploy Grocy anyway, but I never thought about using it for this. Thank you!
A google forms alternative would be convenient. You could make an easy to fill out page that inouts to a spreadsheet. Put warranty reminders in your calander for a month before it expires.
@[email protected] we’ve recently deployed Netbox which seems to somewhat do what you want, although its more targetted towards datacenter and network engineers (and maybe not lightweight enough for you?)
If you really need nothing special then maybe a good ol’ spreadsheet is a better solution for you.
Yep, maybe it really is. I just wanted to see of there’s something nicer out there before settling.
I think I recall seeing Netbox a while ago, and I remember thinking that it would be something I’d like to use at work, but we already have idoit there (which I hate passionately).
I get very far by just keeping a set of folders for each piece of equipment in a git repo.
Pictures, etc, and sometimes the PDF manual if I bother.
The difficult part here is being consistent over time - making sure you mark down when you bought things, serial numbers, etc. a proper website/app will force you to do this, but there is flexibility in having whatever convention you like most
Well, I do have a PaperlessNGX already, so I could use a custom field for SerialNo or something like that, but I just feel like PNGX isn’t really designed for this task.
