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• Recap of the past four years: part 2

  Dylan • 3 days ago • 0 comments

  The real fun: Hardware

  Alright, enough about the software for a minute since there's a lot of stuff I tested and experimented with on the hardware side and I may not be able to keep all of the timeline flowing exactly as it happened, but I'll do my best to keep it chronological.

  This is still pretty early, around 2022 when I was trying to play with ideas on how I can have a physical storage device actually determine quantities. Weight seemed to be something generic, to play into the "industry agnostic" ideals I was working towards. Over the years a lot of people have inquired about "why don't you use machine vision?" to which I point them towards the ol' jar of jelly beans problem. Trying to figure out how many things are in a 3D space that can constantly move around seems extremely complex, not to mention expensive, if there's going to be a lot of bins for small loose parts.

  At this time I wasn't focusing as much on workbench sized storage, but was just trying to figure out something.

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• Recap of the past four years: part 1

  Dylan • 09/30/2026 at 14:32 • 0 comments

  Since this project has been going on for so long and I am terrible at trying to keep logs of the process, I wanted to break down what was done and provide better insights as to why warecache is what it is today.

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  Origins: motivation

  Ok, so back to the beginning. I, like many people here, get frustrated when trying to work with some tool or process and feel like there has to be some better way to actually do something. As you likely have read in the project description, I was trying to figure out how to deal with running out of a linear encoder and taking an abysmal amount of time to replace it in an outdated design, but there were a few other annoyances I had. 

  I've hoarded parts for leftover or partially finished projects for over a decade, and it's annoying to have to try and find what you need without some better way to track what was bought. Normally I would store all of the relevant parts for a project together though this ends up with duplicate parts in multiple cardboard DigiKey or Mouser boxes. What about having a reel of 100nF capacitors on hand to share between projects? Where the hell does that go?

  Of course, that's drops in the ocean compared to the amount of crap that the various employers had. I can't remember how many hours I've spent digging through random parts to help debug something. Quite often it was easier to just order a new part, but then what to do about keeping that IC on hand for when someone inevitably blows it up during testing? Just ends up being the same problem over and over again.

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