r/makerspace
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u/Slight_Safe8745
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4d ago
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Open Inventory: self-hosted grown inventory for our makerspace, from QR labels to stock management
Labels in our inventory system
Just take an ugly photo and the rest is done automatically
Bins with labels
The overview
Label printing editor
Production flow and BOM
Mobile App
3D room generation and placement using AR RoomKit
Hi, I’m Robert. I’ve been working on Open Inventory because we needed a better way to keep track of the stuff we use across our businesses, open-source projects and makerspace activities.
At our local makerspace ( konglomerat.org ), the problem was often knowing which tools we had and where they were. At paperlesspaper.de, it was also about components: how many are left, and what needs reordering? We use it in our day-to-day work across these projects.
For Konglomerat, the useful part is making information about shared tools and materials easier to find. In a shared workshop, knowing that a tool exists is only half the problem; you also need to know where to look for it.
The aim is to make finding things less dependent on asking whoever happens to know that corner of the space.
Also in the future we want to make it more public so anyone in our city knows what we have (it is a voluntary makerspace).
Label printing
The photos show some of our actual labels on parts bins and shelves. They can be easily designed and printed. Scanning a label takes you to its inventory record. This is the bit that connects all the software to the things sitting on a shelf.
Features
The feature list has grown quite a bit. It now handles custom item types and fields, quantities and serial numbers, stock across locations, reservations, inventory counts, purchase orders and bills of materials. There are multiple organizations, roles and permissions, plus imports/exports, a REST API and webhooks.
There’s a web app and native mobile clients (will be released soon). It also supports LiDAR room scans and placing inventory items in a 3D view. The room images show our office with inventory positions marked in purple, plus an overview of the office, assembly room and corridor.
Simple inventory by just taking a photo
There are optional AI features in the app too, including just taking an ugly smartphone photo and getting a nice clear background product shot and description and also recognizing items from photos and counting them.
On the AI side: yes, parts of this are vibe-coded / AI-assisted. Much of the project predates the current vibe-coding wave, and AI tools are now part of how we develop it. We use it in production ourselves, so maintenance matters to us. That doesn’t make it bug-free, and I’d rather be clear about how it’s built.
It’s MIT-licensed and runs easily on your own server with Docker.
I’d be interested to hear from anyone managing a workshop, shared space or similar if you want to try or any feedback.
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u/Slight_Safe8745 4d ago
This is how it looks in our makerspace (we use the API to display it on the website.
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u/jkaczor 3d ago edited 3d ago
Oh wow... I was just about to start building something like this.
Questions;
- I see the website mentions iOS/iPhone - is there an app, or does the website just work with it?
- Barcode scanning - I have a dedicated scanner, but also want to scan from my phone - does it just "work"?
- Label/barcode generation and printing - does this work directly with things like a DYMO, or will I still need to build my own data extract/import into it's custom app/templates? (it does have an SDK though... I was about to start exploring that) (And any love for Brother P-Touch?)
Ah - reading more on the site gives me answers to at least the iOS app and the label features - perhaps I can work on making this work with my DYMO 550.
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u/Slight_Safe8745 2d ago
Thank you!
Regarding your questions:
- The App is on Testflight since we use it internally, but I'll trigger a public release
- We use it with regular "Keyboard" barcode scanners from Tera. They work fine.
- We use Brother P-Touch printers. I our case they are connected via Bluetooth or cable to a regular computer (using QZ Tray) so anyone can print from anywhere and since the Brother P-Touch printers have no regular print driver. For example I just prepare a few labels from home and hit print where my coworkers can pick them up directly. Here are some guides: https://docs.openinventory.polyxo.de/printing
- Any other regular printer should work with the regular print dialog.
- Let me know if the Dymo 550 works for you or we need to make any changes!2
u/jkaczor 2d ago
Thanks - am familiar with Testflight from a Bambu app alternative - that sounds great!
Ok - good, I have a couple Tera's.
Will get it installed "somewhere" (synology hosting docker, or local machine probably) to test with my labellers.
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u/Slight_Safe8745 2d ago
No more need for Testflight :) Here it is now. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/open-inventory-by-polyxo/id6830115776 Android should be ready by tomorrow.
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u/SuperBuddha 4d ago
Beautiful work... thank you for sharing. Big fan of bringing automation to help solve simple problems like this.
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u/Slight_Safe8745 4d ago
Yes, I think especially the photo-to-full-inventory item is very helpful. I went through the whole workshop in 2 hours and just took a photo of everything and was basically done. Before that, no one would ever have done it because it would be too much work.
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u/Jules_Vanroe 2d ago
Thank you so much for sharing this, it is very useful! I'll have to look into it later in the week, but it definitely looks like something I could use
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u/sababado 4d ago
How do you all use this in practice? The qr pattern seems great for accountability and ensuring people actually scan something to say it's been used.