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Programming Technology

A Barcode Driven Kitchen and Grocery List? 105

Posted by Cliff from the digital-assistance-for-common-tasks dept.
Crazy Brian asks: "I have envisioned, for some time now, having a 3Com Audrey with a barcode scanner in my kitchen, where I can scan in items as I put them away, then scan them again as I use them. Barcode information would be stored on my MySQL server, and an inventory would be updated. I could then generate a shopping list, or link it to a database of recipes, to find out what I can have for dinner tonight. The closest thing I have found is the ShopWizard from Symbol, which only runs under Windows. Is there anything out there for Linux? I hope it can use the upcdatabase to find unknown barcodes. Is there any group interest in creating something like this, assuming nothing already exists?" Icepick's Trashbin is a simple application built on this concept, but wouldn't knowing exactly what is in your cabinets and having a ready-made grocery list be a useful feature for any kitchen?
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A Barcode Driven Kitchen and Grocery List? More

A Barcode Driven Kitchen and Grocery List?

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  • Already exists (Score:4, Funny)

    by Glonoinha ( 587375 ) on Sunday December 12, 2004 @10:10AM (#11065929) Journal
    The appliance that automagically keeps track of your groceries, makes lists of what's needed from the store, even goes and gets them from the store while you are at work - already exists.

    It's called a wife.
    • Dude, your wife dosent read slashdot, does she?
    • Yes, there is another appliance that a lot of slashdot'ers have heard of too, that is called "Mother!"

    • Re:Already exists (Score:2, Informative)

      by really? ( 199452 )
      Entirely too much maintenance required for a "wife unit".
      I find that a "maid unit" is much more trouble free; simple maintenance, EASY upgrade.
      Mind you, I have yet to try out a "wife unit" as I can't seem to find a try before you buy version. (No, "girlfriend unit" does not count.)
    • Yes, but computers can't talk.

      -Peter

    • Re:Already exists (Score:5, Funny)

      by caswelmo ( 739497 ) on Monday December 13, 2004 @12:51PM (#11073098)
      While initially excited about my purchase of this product, I have been dissapointed with its overall performance. The initial buy-in was a significant investment, but I had figured that the lack of subscription costs for the life of the unit would make it a worthwhile purchase.

      Unfortunately, after a short period of appropriate use I found my item started to malfunction. The day after the two-week warranty period ended it started to make an increasingly annoying noise. A high-pitched wail of sorts. The noise seems to repeat until a specific function is performed. At times the noise even exceeds the volume of the television.

      In addition the ports on my model are rarely accessible. Even getting the exterior case off is a major achievement. For some reason I have found it easier to plug-in when floral arrangments are visible to the unit. Strange but true.

      In summary, while the lack of subscription costs in a nice bonus, I would suggest that consumers purchase their products on a per-need basis. At least, until resources become scarce, at which time I would suggest grabbing hold of the first product you can and praying she doesn't read Slashdot.
      • You may want to look into a refund, you were decieved about the lack of subscription cost. They don't call it a subscription, actually they call it an anniversary, and instead of paying money, you have to give her clear rocks that have a falseley inflated market value. I am sorry you have been mislead

  • idea old as... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by gl4ss ( 559668 ) on Sunday December 12, 2004 @10:15AM (#11065956) Homepage Journal
    well, something.

    but you don't seem to realize that it actually is a lot of extra hassle to scan things when you put them in and when you take them out, also you can't know if the juice is almost empty or whatever.

    so unless you're running a biiiig kitchen at some facility it doesn't make that much sense, actually.

    • Never underestimate how anal some people can be. *shrug* But it occurs to me that it'd be a lot simpler to use a RFID system, but that might not be as practical cost wise.
      • It occurs to me that it takes just as long to check the fridge and cabnet as it does to look through a database, even if the database has a way of tracking items using RFID tags.

        Honestly, there is already an easy way to see what one can have for dinner. I use it every day. It's called my eyes. It takes me less than a minute to check the fridge, freezer, and cabinets to see what I have. If I tried to track everything, putting away groceries would take much longer, and cooking (or just grabbing that midn
        • True, but you can't check the cabinet from work or have a list of what's missing from your cabinet sent to your cell phone via a cron every payday.

          What I really want is a program that will take a list of stores I'll shop at, take a list of the products I want to buy including brand and size (intergration with this tracking tool would be handy), collect the up to the minute sale prices from each of my stores online, and output my shopping list spread out over all the stores by the lowest price. Now that w

          • Part of the point of my sarcasm is that it'd be easier to just look and see. I don't know about you, or anyone else, but I find I tend to remember pretty easily what's in the kitchen, almost without any effort.

            It just seems to me you're spending weeks putting together a system that will save you a few minutes at a time. In ten or fifteen years, assuming you don't have to maintain the system, the time may even out.

            It reminds me of the time I typed in the titles, authors, and other info into a database fo
            • The only thing I have ever found a computerised database for is my music - and that's only because I've got it all digitized. 2000+ songs takes a long time to look through manually.
            • I'm sure many a great idea started under similar pretenses. In the end they saved thousands of people millions of cumulative hours that would have otherwise been wasted. Someone has to spend the time to build the tool before others get a chance to reap the rewards. I can't remember how many times I thought I had a X cans of Y only to find out when I went to make supper that I really only had Z cans of Y, not enough to cook what I'd been planning on. It sure would be nice to be able to tell from somewher
      • That said, I would envision the biggest hassle would be getting the look-up table that lists every UPC and what it actually is ... I mean just because you know that 20138-13604 is a roasted raspberry / chipolte sauce(*) doesn't mean you can necessarily derive product from UPC number - you have to already have the database that knows.

        Footnotes
        (*) - and a damn nice roasted raspberry / chipolte sauce at that.
      • Thats an interesting idea, do supermarket scanners fry the RFID chips embeded in the products when they are scanned or do the anti-theft monitors check whats going past the scanners against whats been sold recently?
    • We have 3 adults and 4 kids in my household. We make triple and quaduple batches of everything. We shop at Sam's, and actually use it all before it spoils. We have more then the average amount of cupboard space. Seperate 20cu ft freezer. It gets to be quite a bit to keep track of. Once a month or so, the wife and I have to go through and take inventory so we don't duplicate buy stuff, and forget to buy other stuff. So this is the idea I came up with for us.

  • Why just limit yourself to having the barcode in (Score:4, Insightful)

    by antifoidulus ( 807088 ) on Sunday December 12, 2004 @10:24AM (#11066001) Homepage Journal
    the kitchen?
    I have thought about this system myself as well. You can get cards for many PDAs that will scan barcodes, so that way you can "cross" things off at the supermarket(though I would expect some strange looks). Hell, if you like writing code, you could even have the software plan out your shopping, have it locate the aisles everything is in and tell you where to go.
    • Oddly enough, when I was in college I noticed that I purchased the same things every week. So when I went to the store once, I wrote down the aisle numbers and put everything in a spreadsheet. Sort, print, compare it to what I had in the cupboard (not much, poor college student), and I had a quick, optimized shopping list.

      If I could keep the batteries charged in my PDA, I'd be tempted to inventory things that I don't buy very often, like spices. Nobody needs 5 cans of chili spice because they couldn't reme

  • This again? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Otter ( 3800 ) on Sunday December 12, 2004 @10:32AM (#11066033) Journal
    ...wouldn't knowing exactly what is in your cabinets and having a ready-made grocery list be a useful feature for any kitchen?

    People have been talking about this since the Apple II. The problem is, that given that:

    1) The small size of most home kitchens means that it's relatively easy to keep track of that list in your head. I can tell you without looking that I have pinto beans and lemon juice, but need to buy butter.

    2) Home kitchen inventories don't need to be managed as tightly as a Wal-Mart. Unless you're insanely well-organized, there is no cost of capital or opportunity cost to keeping non-perishables around a little longer until you need them.

    So the trouble of maintaining a kitchen database, checking every can in and out, makes it more work than just keeping a well-stocked kitchen and buying special items (rack of lamb, sassafras root) when you need them.

    • Re:This again? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Tanktalus ( 794810 ) on Sunday December 12, 2004 @12:35PM (#11066618) Journal

      I do understand that there are a number of people saying "why bother?" My answer:

      1. This is an "ask" story in a "News for Nerds" site. Um, what could be more nerdy than a roll-your-own barscan kitchen inventory running on Linux? (translation: calm down.)
      2. I would find some use for it if it were able to take hand-written lists and combine them with the barcode list (multiple sources, merged from a palm pilot or something). This means that for non-agribusiness foodstuffs (produce, possibly meat), as we run out/low, we can just write it in the list. But for other items, I need to be able to specify where it is - we have a reasonable supply of most non-perishables in the kitchen, but for larger bulk (whether it's a flat of 20 cans of soup, or it's rolls of paper towels), we store that in the basement. So it'd be nice to say where something is stored so we can easily see where all of our soup is, and how much (total) we have. Maybe I'm just being lazy (hey, that's a virtue in my programming language!). Or just plain geeky.
      Whatever it is - it's fun. I run a linux webserver on my home machine - somewhat overkill. But I use it because it's fun. Same with email, etc. - so please don't crap all over someone else's geekiness. One man's garbage (waste of time) is another man's treasure (fun way to entertain themselves).
      • Fair enough -- I usually dislike "Why bother?" answers to Ask Slashdot, as well. In this case, though, given that the answer to his question of "Is there an off-the-shelf Linux solution available?" (he's not, as I understood it, planning to roll his own) seems to be "no", general ruminations on the topic seemed not inappropriate.

      • This is an "ask" story in a "News for Nerds" site.

        But is a "News for Obsessive Compulsives" site?

        Personally, I have a whiteboard on the fridge, if I go to use something and it's almost empty or not there, I write it on the fridge. When time comes to make a shopping list that's the starting point.

        It mostly works except when my husband finishes something, doesn't write it on the whiteboard then complains that there is no more coke, bread, milk, whatever...

    • Re:This again? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by bitingduck ( 810730 )
      People have been talking about this since the Apple II.

      And computers have almost gotten to where they can realize their full potential in the kitchen-keeping track of recipes, which was a justification for many computers to sneak into homes in those days.

      This thanksgiving is the first time I used the computer to help in the kitchen-- not because I'm very anal (I'm very bad at being anal) but because it was easier than any other way. I had emailed out the menu to my mom who came to visit from out of sta
      • The spice cabinet is another place for RFID tags-- I have a lot of spices, including many obscure ones, and I'm too lazy to organize them in the very large spice cabinet. I'd like to be able to pull up a list of what's in there to compare to recipes.

        Hey! That's not oregano.

      • Re:This again? (Score:3, Interesting)

        by RevAaron ( 125240 )
        Indeed, it'd be nice to have this for spices.

        Management by itself seems like a why-bother issue to me. What I'd like is to have integration between this little ingredient database- including dry spices, perishables, frozen stuff, canned goods and everthing else- and a recipesdatabase, whether it's my personal list of recipes or something like the awesome allrecipes.com [allrecipes.com] and webtender.com [webtender.com]. I'd love to be able to go onto allrecipes and click a button labelled "give me a 5-course meal with what i have!" and h
        • Or perhaps, leave me only buying fresh rosemary

          Which reminds me that it also has to account for things growing in the yard...

          I'd be happy to have all the data without the integration-- most of the time I don't bother with recipes, or I use them for inspiration but modify them a lot. The integration is just an added bonus, but as I write this it seems like it might include thresholds for missing items and recommended substitutions-- if you have nearly the right stuff for a recipe, you can usually do a pr
        • This is exactly what I thought about when I started reading all the complaints about why bothering with tracking all of your grocery items.

          A database of potential recipes based on your current stock of groceries is a great idea.

          I don't know about you, but I have all kinds of groceries stuffed in the back of my pantry, and I have a real hard time remembering what I have on hand without spending a long time digging through everything.

          Another feature that I would love would be automatic tracking of expirati
  • So you aren't planning on normalizing the data or using referential integrity? Where are you going to do that, in the application layer?

    My hat's off you, sir, and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

    • Re:MySQL, huh? (Score:3, Informative)

      by iamsure ( 66666 )
      Nice troll.

      You can use innodb tables to get referential integrity, and why wouldn't you be able to normalize the data? MySQL has had that ability for ages.

      And you are already a subscriber HERE, where they use MySQL, so clearly you are willing to pay for services driven by mysql. :)
      • *And you are already a subscriber HERE, where they use MySQL, so clearly you are willing to pay for services driven by mysql. :)*

        how can you see of someone if he has or has not bought subscription?
        • He has a slashdot id, ergo he already subscribed to this service. Not the premium service, of course.

          • He has a slashdot id, ergo he already subscribed to this service.

            It is always a treat to converse with someone who does not speak the English language natively. In your native language, what does the word "subscribed" mean?

            On one level, you are correct. I use this "service." Considering the competency level of the developers (i.e., very low [slashdot.org]), why would you exemplify /. as high-quality code? Have you even bothered to examine its architecture? I think not.

          • well.. you just put it like he would have subscripted to the PAY(as in actual money changing hands) service..

            it's not usually considered that you subscribe to public tv channels either if you are a viewer and even 'paying' by watching ads.
  • How would the scanner know whether something was being added to inverntory or removed from inventory?

    Know for the idea. You are using Linux and MySQL. Why not write an open source app that can do this? Write an import filter that will import all the recipes off of (say) epicurious.com. You could even leave it so you could add more recipe sites at a later date.
  • Why would I want the hassle of having to scan items in and out of my frig like a damn library when I can easily see if I'm out of milk or not? This is the craziest idea I've ever heard. It'd be something else if the frig was automatically scanning its contents and then you could log into it to see. So if I'm out and about and can't remember if I have butter then I could check remotely. But manually scanning the items is not very convenient.
    • It'd make more sense to scan when purchased, and then to scan again when you noticed that you were "almost" out of the stuff. Possibly one more time when you ran out totally. Scanning every time you use it would be rather pointless, unless you also record the amount used so the amount remaining could be calculated (or maybe used an integrated scale and scanned), and scanning every time would take a lot of extra time. Doing what I suggested would basically speed up grocery list maintaining...

  • Wow, I'm tired... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Gothic_Walrus ( 692125 ) on Sunday December 12, 2004 @11:02AM (#11066159) Journal
    When I first read the headline, I thought it said "A Barcode Driven Kitten and Grocery List?"

    Even if technology were to that point, I don't think Slashdot users should be asked about biological engineering... :)

  • This is a recipe for eating only prepackaged foods produced by the Agribusiness industry. Maybe you should just skip all the trouble and take food pills.

    I try to purchase food that does NOT have standardized corporate barcodes on it. My local butcher allows me to select cuts from a display case, he weighs it and puts a pricetag on it. I put vegetables in a plastic bag, and they get weighed at the checkout. I can buy pasta in bulk. I cook it myself from recipies I've developed, instead of reading the instru
    • This is a recipe for eating only prepackaged foods produced by the Agribusiness industry. Maybe you should just skip all the trouble and take food pills.

      No, the story's submitter just needs to make an additional investment in some barcode software and a printer, then create custom SKUs for anything that doesn't come pre-barcoded.

      With proper design, perhaps only 15-20 minutes would be added to the process of storing groceries upon returning from the store. Imagine the convenience!

      I cook it myself from r

      • Re:The Agribusiness Diet (Score:5, Insightful)

        by sakusha ( 441986 ) on Sunday December 12, 2004 @03:58PM (#11067628)
        I think you're missing my point. Allow me to illustrate, with an old Calvin & Hobbes comic I still have taped to my refrigerator. Calvin's dad is ranting about the frantic pace of modern life, and how we have all sorts of labor-saving machines that are supposed to make life easier, but instead, just make it faster paced, and more stressful. In the final frame, Calvin is holding a package of frozen food, screaming "SIX MINUTES in a microwave? I don't have TIME for this!"
        If I had 15-20 extra minutes to spend every time I go to the store, I'd probably be better off spending it cooking or cleaning the kitchen. If I had a hundred bucks to spend on a bar code printer, I'd probably be better off spending it on better quality food. This whole scenario is a classic example of "goal displacement," the goal of cooking is to provide a healthy diet of tasty food, it's not an inventory management problem or a time management problem. Peoples' diets are getting worse because they're treating cooking like a trip to a gas station, a task that must be taken care of and gotten out of the way. Slow down and smell the coffee (preferably not instant coffee). Food is a pleasurable thing, cooking is fun, not a chore to be turned into another computer algorithm. Some things don't benefit from computerization.
        • Food is a pleasurable thing, cooking is fun, not a chore to be turned into another computer algorithm.

          You could say the same about driving, or web design, or math. But we still have public transportation, Frontpage/Dreamcast/Nvu, and calculators, simply because those things aren't enjoyed by everyone. For some, food is a means to an end - nourishing the body so we can get back to whatever else we do. For others, it is an end in itself.
          • The difference being, every single human being can derive pleasure from eating delicious, healthful food, but everybody could survive just fine without driving, math, or web design. Knowing how to prepare food and eat healthily is a survival skill, bred into mankind's genes since prehistoric times. Eating what Agribusiness sells you is a modern way to develop obesity and heart disease.

        • If I had 15-20 extra minutes to spend every time I go to the store, I'd probably be better off spending it cooking or cleaning the kitchen. If I had a hundred bucks to spend on a bar code printer, I'd probably be better off spending it on better quality food. This whole scenario is a classic example of "goal displacement," the goal of cooking is to provide a healthy diet of tasty food, it's not an inventory management problem or a time management problem. Peoples' diets are getting worse because they're tre

          • Although I never tried their recipes, you might want to have a look at savingdinner [savingdinner.com]. Or try at least the sample menu.

            You get an email with the menu for the week plus a shopping list. The main disadvantage is that the menu is for 2 or 6 servings, not ideal for a single.

        • I think you're just really really uptight.

          First, why can't you just consider this an academic discussion? Why do you have to beat the guy (gal?) up over something they are thinking about doing? What, you think you have all the right answers? Your way is the only healthy way, the only good way? That's just selfish and arrogant (though no suprise here at /.).

          Second, you CAN eat healthy without doing every little thing yourself. Example: http://www.sshe.com/ [sshe.com]
        • while(eggs != done) { fry(&eggs) }
        • Some things don't benefit from computerization.
          To quote from The Blues Brothers: "Don't you blaspheme in here! Don't you BLASpheme in HERE!" [nederpoparchief.nl]
      • No, the story's submitter just needs to make an additional investment in some barcode software and a printer, then create custom SKUs for anything that doesn't come pre-barcoded.

        Then why not grab some digital scales and hook them up to a serial port or whatever and get them to take a reading when you scan the barcode.

        And, for the full effect, add a beep sound and a line of impatient people and screaming kids just outside your fridge.

    • You mean the meat some big conglomerate raised in a box for you?
      • You're obviously been duped by ridiculous PETA propaganda like "Diet for a Small Planet."

        I live in a an agricultural state, but the state government implemented serious laws that prevent big conglomerates from taking over and consolidating farms. It's all small farms around here. When I was a kid, my dad used to buy meat and produce direct from Amish farms, and a lot of people around here still do. We're way upstream from agribusiness conglomerates.
        • All animals when killed suffer. Big Farm or small.
          • Yeah, and L Ron Hubbard said vegetables feel pain when you chew or cook them. And your point was...?
          • And if we're at the top of the evolutionary chain, that matters why?

            Personally I don't buy into macroevolution - a dog doesn't become anything other than a dog - but people are free to believe whatever they want.
          • some of them deserve it. really.

            I used to raise animals for my 4-H projects. I raised swine, chicken, heifers, steers, lambs... you name it. And i won quite a few prizes at the fair.

            One year I was raising a steer named Bobby. Bobby was a bad bad animal. He was being raised on a nice farm, with tender loving care, and really good food, yet he showed nothing but malice toward everyone. Basically everybody got kicked, head butted (hard enough to send a grown 200lb man over a fence), and hurt. In the show rin
  • Just some information if you start implementing....

    Most USB barcode scanners just function as a usb keyboard. This means the application just has to have a text entry field. The barcode scanner will behave just as if it were somebody typing the barcode at a keyboard and pressing return afterwards.

    There are actually a lot of programs that do barcode scanning for your home on the mac. Not groceries -- most are for books, CDs and DVDs. See: http://www.versiontracker.com/php/search.php?mode = basic&ac [versiontracker.com]

  • Already been done (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 12, 2004 @01:14PM (#11066811)
    http://www.cedarnet.org/smartware/Hardware/PantryP od/ [cedarnet.org] It even uses a :CueCat!
  • i have a tcl\tk inventory application that could easily be used as suggested. contact me at jjshoe@gmail.com if your intrested.
  • Is this something that perhaps could be integrated into MythTV [mythtv.org]?

    As it stands, I'd love to have something like that. My family room and kitchen are together in the same area of the house. It'd be trivial for me to walk over to the TV when I run out of something and scan it (with my CueCat) so that it can be added to a grocery list before I toss out the empty container.

    In the future, an RFID scanner placed in my recycling box could do this trick automatically.

    A quick click of the remote could then print
  • but wouldn't knowing exactly what is in your cabinets and having a ready-made grocery list be a useful feature for any kitchen?

    No.
  • This is sortof like the fridge that keeps track of its contents but would be a lot more convenient. It could be used by small shops to track their stock also - maybe a personal and business edition of the software would be cool.

    Patented???
  • Try creating an inventory tracking system, PERIOD. Lots of stuff you use has barcodes. You could scan things "in" and "out" to try to keep track of stuff. So you scan it in when you take it out of your bag from the store, and scan it "out" when you open the package or use somethin' up, or maybe loan it someone.

    Of course, it lacks wifi, so you'd have to probably code an app that queues up the operations (scan-in, then out, then in again should be collapsed to one scan-in)

    Unfortunately, you're probably bett

  • Some thoughts. (Score:4, Informative)

    by NoMoreNicksLeft ( 516230 ) <john.oylerNO@SPAMcomcast.net> on Sunday December 12, 2004 @11:24PM (#11069845) Journal
    Nothing beats a cuecat for cheap barcode scanners. PS2 and USB are available, and no stupid driver funkiness.

    Also consider a scanner tasked only to scan receipts. I've been considering something myself, perhaps a small business card scanner would work. As you're putting away the groceries, stick the receipt in there, and a custom script files, OCRs, whatevers it. Maybe also noting the day and time. It could automatically pop up a warning on day 8 that "If the half gallon of milk isn't finished today, it may be time to finish it off or toss it." or somesuch. Or even auto-generate the grocery list as it decides the items are gone, or spoiled.

    And as much as I hate RFID, you gotta admit, for at least this one application, it would be cool.
    • I've given the reciept thing a thought as well. Seeing as how 'electronic reciepts' sent to your email, PDA, or cell phone are a long way off, this might be the best solution.

      If you're like me, your pockets keep filling up with these little slips of paper from all over: the gas station, 7-11, the office cafeteria, wherever.

      Such a device could not only handle inventory of grocery reciepts, but could track your bottom line putting software like Quicken to shame.

      Sure, it'd be an OCR nightmare, but it could
      • OCR nightmare? Wouldn't be the simplest, these things fade pretty badly. But they're often simple dotmatrix fonts, and very regular, and you can make some assumptions about all the characters on it. For instance, the right column should always be numbers... no getting those 5s confused with S.

        And yeh, pump that data into a Quicken-like program, and it could be very nice.

        Haven't found a scanner I've liked yet. One will turn up at the flea market, or the thrift stores soon, though. ;-)
  • <joke>Quick! Everyone run to the patent office and steal his idea!</joke>

  • I have often thought of this too. Except in my version it combines a recipe database, an inventory database, and a barcode database.

    Besides the obvious maintenance of a database of items in your cupboard, it maintains a database of all items in your house. For those of us who have home-owners/renters insurance, this database is invaluable when it comes to loss replacement claims.

    But the number one reason I want to get this implemented is that often my wife and I have no idea what to fix for dinner, ev

  • Online Grocery shopping (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Dekks ( 808541 )
    As others have pointed out, it seems more trouble than its worth and would be quicker to just write a list by hand. What would be kinda cool though if someone knocked up something the guy was asking for and managed to interface it with one of the many online grocery services, scan the items, click a button and the computer goes and restocks your kitchen for you.
  • If you have a spouse or kids, forget it. The wife, if she is suffiently geekified, might remember to out-scan every time. But the kids? Not a chance. And their friends, even less.

    The inventory will quickly be useless.

  • When I was trying to figure out how to track ingredients for my own linux-based Gourmet recipe manager [sourceforge.net], I finally gave up on all systems that tracked amounts of ingredients as useless. Instead, I adopted an interface [sourceforge.net] suggested by my wife. When my recipe manager generates shopping lists, it brings up a two-column view: your shopping list and your "pantry list" (stuff your recipes call for that the program assumes you already have). You can easily drag items from one column to the other and the program will r
  • If you need all this to establish a check list that you can read from your work place, I have another idea: install webcams in your fridge (with light) and in other critical places of your kitchen. It will have an other side-feature: you'll be able to track roasts and blast them if you add other gadgets.
  • I actually started working on this, but the php is so terrible, I'd be scared for anyone else to see it (especially you evil slashdotters). Regardless, I know I could use something like this in my kitchen. I used a bar code reader called a Flic, which has memory built in. I'd scan all the items as I put them away, then plug the Flic into the computer (which had already been set to the input screen), and dump the text into the text box. Hit submit, and the barcodes would increment the inventory. Then, perfo

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