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Messages - nabilt

31
General discussion / Re: How do you manage your parts?
If I understand correctly you want a way to add distributors that are not indexed by Octopart like the local electronic shop. This is a good idea that I could see adding in the future. People could write a plugin to search their particular distributor, but you will have to enter this information manually for now.
32
General discussion / Re: How do you manage your parts?
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Shaos:
Also jameco has 2 entries for 0.1uF tantalum capacitor and only paper catalog says that one has 0.1' distance between contacts and another has 0.2' etc. So ideal solution for this problem is kind of social network of hobbyists who shares their own experience about some particular items that they bought from one or more distributors.

I really like the idea of a social network helping you choose parts. One of my ideas was to have a public parts list so we can share knowledge about our favorite parts. For example, maybe you want to find a pressure sensor that is reliable and has an easy interface. The user could do a search and find the parts list for an open source project like the arducopter, which uses the MEAS MS5011. That might be a good place to start researching since they have presumably tested a few.
34
General discussion / Re: How do you manage your parts?
I found a command line project from Techo Labs in the early stages with some interesting features.

http://teholabs.com/2012/01/tehologistics/
Source: https://github.com/teholabs/tehoLogistics

From the readme
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Features:
Imports invoices Mouser PDF, Digikey PDF, Arrow HTML (email)
Keeps current inventory and average unit cost of application identical parts in CSV file
Removes inventory via "building" lists (AKA making PCBs), lists defined externally via CSV file
Look up and modifiy inventory data amount of single parts
Check if parts are on hand for production of set of designs and create shopping list if needed
Create buy lists for lowest cost source importable at Arrow, Mouser, Digikey parts needed a production run
36
General discussion / Re: How do you manage your parts?
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spanner888:
It seems highly unlikely that the commercial services are available to help the community at community pricing, so I would love to contribute to something like this.
I guess it depends on the business model. For example, github has done a great job of hosting open source projects for free and releasing parts of their backend like the wiki http://https://github.com/github. They convert a small percentage of their users into paying customers and we get better tools and hosting for git repos. Not a bad deal if you ask me.

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spanner888:
Are other people interested?
I am. Like I said I'm planing to release the components that would be useful like inventory management, price checking etc, but I do plan on providing a hosted solution similar to github. So if someone else wants to put the components together to provide a similar hosted solution they would have to roll their own user authentication system and other stuff related to users. That said people might want to go a different way than I am planning. I'll help out either way.

Some background info. The app is currently built using the Pyramid framework AKA Pylons, MongoDB for storage, and dojo for the front end. It is fairly basic in terms of features at this point. You can make a project with parts and find the cheapest distributor. Right now I'm adding a search feature so the user can change the part if the system finds the wrong one.

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arhi:
I seen 4 different small companies that build a lot of small stuff (they make custom electronics for clients). And all four companies use exactly the same principle.
Fascinating. It seems like it would be a pain to work with all of these restrictions, but that's life in the corporate world I guess. This also reinforces the need for a better online collaboration tools for hobbyists and companies like DP since it would be difficult to implement these policies on the internet.

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ian:
Our ERP/management system is based on the slides SparkFun showed of their custom system called Sparkle at the sketching conference.
Cool. I didn't know Sparkfun open sourced this kind of stuff. Adafruit also does a great job in this area like you've mentioned. Cool to see you guys are all working together.
37
General discussion / Re: How do you manage your parts?
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http://demo.aligni.com
Interesting. They import your parts into their online database which tracks projects through the different stages of its lifetime. You can keep track of your distributors and keep records of quotes for different parts. They store digital assets like datasheets in your Amazon S3 account if you have one. They also seem to do purchasing, but I'm not sure if they have relationships with the manufactures or if that is up to the user to deal with. From their doc:

Quote
Email a private ticket to view the RFQ to each contact.
Receive completed quotes from vendors and discuss them within Aligni.
Convert quotes from vendors directly to quotes within your database.

Sounds like they act as the middle man.

Overall, looks like a very solid inventory system. A bit confusing for me cause I'm probably not their typical user, but still impressive. Do you have experience with this BrentBXR?
38
General discussion / Re: How do you manage your parts?
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Internally, we have a zygote of an ERP system that tracks the inventory of parts we have, but does not have any ability to remove parts for projects or work with eg Eagle BOMs.
Is this custom built and is this what most companies do? I would like to know how small to medium size business deal with this. I'm sure large companies have custom build tools.

We really do need something like github for electronics with features like
- wiki, issue tracker, maybe revision control (basically what github provides)
- Visual diffs for PCBs
- Smart inventory manager that can price check across distributors
- eCommerce integration for people that sell kits (what spanner888 was talking about)
- Social features like user project portfolios or public part lists [ my dev board is better than yours :) ]

Funny, this looks like what Upverter is trying to achieve except from a different angle.
39
General discussion / Re: How do you manage your parts?
Wow! That's amazing brian! Any reason you didn't use a part search engine like Octopart or Findchips? Also, how difficult has it been parsing the distributors websites? I find my self doing this for different projects and I'm always worried their website will change.
40
General discussion / Re: How do you manage your parts?
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This project from a German hackerspace is also developing well http://partkeepr.org, but it is more of an inventory only system.
Partkeepr looks cool. Seems like a robust inventory system.

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I am also interested in your idea from a different angle, as one of my many projects is to do something similar with all the DP project BOM to extend the current BOMs and Shopping carts http://dangerousprototypes.com/docs/Shopping_carts.
This is a great idea. One of my goals was to have API that would let people embed their parts and projects on their own sites, but I never thought about using it in a shopping cart. Seems like the perfect use case. Currently, the website generates a CSV that the user would copy and paste into the various BOM importers like this one https://ordering.digikey.com/registered ... eader=link

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The guys at Upverter, which people here love and hate, are already doing something similar where they presumably use Octopart to purchase the parts for Upverter projects for you.
Haha, I like these guys plus they're based in Toronto! I figured they would add some kind of BOM manager eventually, but I think there would still be people that want a stand alone product that does inventory, ordering and collaboration. Seems like you agree.

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Also have you looked into including delivery costs?
On the backlog. Not sure how I would do it. Maybe just hard code the values for each distributor?

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Are you interested in extending in this direction or releasing your code, so others can?
I'm unsure if I will release all of the source. I am planning to releasing the parts the would be useful to the community like the octopart scripts, related tools and inventory system, but probably not the collaboration features. It depends on how/if I plan to monetize it.
41
General discussion / Re: How do you manage your parts?
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Looks nice. I'd use it if it was not Eagle-centric (I use Altium Designer).
Actually the site takes a CSV file so it could potentially support other CAD tools, but that is something I will defiantly try and make easier for non Eagle users.

Since I am using the Octopart search engine API the site will support the ~12 or so distributors they work with. That includes the major ones like Digikey, Mouser, Newark, Future, etc... Did a google search, but couldn't find a complete list.

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And it would be nice to have an option to eliminate certain distributors from the search as well, as some of them do not ship to certain destinations or have other issues which may preclude some people from choosing them.

Good point. Right now it is sorted by number of parts found then price, but it should be easy enough to add a preferred list of distributors. Thanks for the feedback.
42
General discussion / How do you manage your parts?
Seems like this question comes up a lot, but I've never seen a good solution for this. I currently use Google Spreadsheets to keep track of all my parts, but searching through it sucks. It is difficult to know what parts I need to restock when I start a new project. Usually takes me an hour or more to go through my BOM and spreadsheet to find out what I need.

So, I create a utility to do this for me, which has turned into a web app using the Octopart (http://http://octopart.com/) API. The idea is you upload your BOM from Eagle and the app tries to find the cheapest distributor for the parts you don't have. It also keeps an inventory of your existing parts.

It looks like this. Would anyone find this useful?
43
General discussion / Programming the STM32F4 DISCOVERY with the Bus Blaster
I've spent a couple of days figuring out how program my STM32F4 Discovery board in OSX and though I would share here since it got a lot of attention on the DP blog.

My initial research lead me to texane's github where he created a linux version of ST-LINK. It doesn't support the STM32F4 yet, but there is a fork which is making good progress. I couldn't get either to work, which is when I turned to OpenOCD and Bus Blaster. A few minor modifications to the STM32F2 scripts and success. First time using the Bus Blaster and couldn't be happier.

Btw, it programs supper fast.

Here are the details
http://http://www.nabiltewolde.com/2011/10/programming-stm32f4discovery-board-with.html
45
Project development, ideas, and suggestions / Re: Web Platform v2?
Awesome project. Exactly what I was looking for.

 I haven't read through all the posts so I apologize if this was covered. Have you thought putting the board files on google code or something and formalize the development? It would make contributing easier instead of reading 12 pages of past posts.

Thanks

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