Saturday, September 09, 2006

My current project, free food storage software: FoodThinger

Now that I have my PVR/Tivo/that stupid computer that took way too long to set up working, I'm back to some of my older projects that I've left to languish. Currently I'm working on free food storage tracking software. It would help me keep track of what I bought, when it expires, and what I have left to buy to reach my year's supply. I plan on making it open source after I'm done (and after I clean up the code enough that I'm not ashamed of it.)

Why: I want to know what food I have, what food I need to get, and when it expires. I wasn't able to find a free program that did this (there is a $40 program that is pretty cool, if I wasn't so cheap and really want to make something free available I'd use it). Plus, while I'm writing it I don't have to actually organize my food storage :)

Platforms: Windows 2000/XP, probably Linux

Current status: has a list of foods and how much of them I'd need as per providentliving from the LDS church. I can add foods. I can export my foods to a csv file (this is in case I decide my program isn't what I want and decide to just move to a spread sheet).

Currently working on: being able to add custom foods (finished 9/11/2006)

Still to come: reports showing what is expiring in the next n number of months. Reports showing how close I am to a year's supply.

Still to come in a few years when I'm not sick of this project anymore: Meal planning, recipes, and the ability to know what recipes you can make based on what is in your storage.
ETA: probably a month or two assuming I don't get distracted again. I'll probably put it up on SourceForge, unless I get lazy then I'll just post it to PingerThinger.com along with all my other programs.

note(added 6/2008): FoodThinger is now released. Go to http://www.foodthinger.com

3 comments:

gnupate said...

What's the current status on this? I've been planning on starting something similar using Ruby on Rails (for Mac, Windows, and Linux). I'd love to work together if there's enough overlap (and you're interested).

rcstanley said...

I am still working on this and am about 2-3 weeks away from being code complete. (Still have to get printing working.) I would be glad for any help/colaboration if anyone is interested. I will need alpha/beta testers. I do plan to open source this once it gets somewhat stable.

I have a Java frontend on top of a sqlite database. Since I'm working in Java, I should be able to port it to Linux fairly easily (yeah, I know, write once debug everywhere.) Creating the database is what really stinks, so if you hate my interface or would rather write your own frontend, I don't mind sharing the database :)

Anonymous said...

Do you have a Linux version?