Overview
Inventory is an RFID asset management app for home or small businesses
About Inventory
The Inventory app is a solution for your disorganized asset collection. With an inventory combined with the help of RFID technology, it'll be easy to track the location and availability of your items, prevent them from missing, or find them when needed.
This is currently a personal hobby project.
The Inventory project was created after going through a series of stressful house moves. Originally, it aimed to solve the problems of a nomadic lifestyle where everything doesn't have a fixed place, making it hard to manage and locate items.
Use Cases
Inventory serves diverse practical purposes for individuals and organizations to organize, track, and manage their belongings or assets with precision and ease.
Finding Everyday Items: Easily locate keys, wallets, remote controls, and more.
Travel Item Management: Check luggage completeness and find missing items quickly.
Company Asset Tracking: Rapidly verify if company assets are in place and if anything has been left behind at work sites.
Inventory Management: Swiftly record item locations in storage spaces using RFID readers.
Checklists: Create checklists to verify all necessary items for specific activities like camping.
Why Inventory
The Inventory app is designed to address specific challenges in managing and tracking assets in both personal and professional settings.
Efficiency in Locating Items: If you cannot find an item in minutes, it's akin to not having it at all. Log the location of an item in the app, and the next time you need it, use a full-text search to find the item and view its last logged location, turning a potentially lengthy lookup into a quick, effortless task.
Item Tracking with RFID: Searching for misplaced items can be frustrating and time-consuming. Inventory can use RFID technology to quickly locate your items, saving valuable time and reducing stress. RFID can also be used to rapidly log the current location of an item for future reference.
Proactive Stock Management: Keeping track of your inventory can help you avoid unnecessary purchases by reminding you of what you already have. Also, by tracking stock levels, you can know what items need restocking.
Asset Loss Prevention: Whether you're a frequent traveler or need to account for company assets after a day out in the field, Inventory can prevent asset loss during transit from leaving a site. With the help of RFID, you can be assured that nothing is left behind with just a sweep of an RFID reader, or locate a missing item using its RFID tag.
Never Forget a Thing: Whether you're a professional working on-site or an outdoor enthusiast heading for an adventure, having the right tools and equipment is vital. Inventory ensures you're prepared for these scenarios with smart checklists - whether it's ensuring that you have at least one tape measure in your toolbox, the correct chargers for your devices, or all the gear for your outdoor adventure, letting you confidently begin your journey.
While there are a variety of tools for asset management, Inventory stands out due to several key factors that make it exceptionally useful for managing assets within a home or a small business setting.
Source-Available - Inventory's codebase is openly accessible. You can modify the app, add features as needed, or integrate it with other systems. The open nature also encourages a community-driven development process, where feedback and collaborative improvements enrich the app's functionality. Moreover, with a source-available approach, you can use Inventory with confidence, knowing that the continuity of the software can be in your control.
You Own Your Data - With Inventory, the ownership and control of your data remain in your hands. The opened CouchDB API and CouchDB Replication Protocol make it feasible to migrate or integrate with other software or tools. Furthermore, the ability to self-host your data guarantees your operational independence and data sovereignty.
Design - Emphasizing user experience, Inventory adheres to the design guidelines of iOS and Android platforms, ensuring a familiar and intuitive user experience that meshes well with your existing devices. The app aims not just to be aesthetically pleasing but also to be user-friendly, making asset management easy at your fingertips.
Some of the features or use-cases mentioned in this document are still in development.
Getting Started
Before investing in your RFID-tracked inventory, be sure that you're aware of the known limitations. See the price estimation to have an idea of how much it'll cost.
Here are some links for you to get started quickly:
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