There's an unusual habit that I have developed as I left the world of academia and have begun to become a career man. Specifically, I find myself becoming more of a "tinkerer" and continue to try to use the things I do everyday at work (e.g. wireless technologies, database design) to solve simple, yet not egregious problems in a needlessly convulated way to satisfy my nerd urges and also prevent myself from renewing my World of Warcraft subscription. One such instance was developing an internal home media network to facilitate watching digital media on our large tv rather than balancing it needlessly on our knees in bed. XMBC has helped with that nicely and while there remains a considerable amount of work to be done (especially because I broke my server computer Sunday...) it wasn't as investing as a project should be. However, I have begun work on a different project which I have been wanting to work on for a long time.
I would like to address the issue I experience frequently when at the grocery store where I am left debating whether or not we have item x, something that could make or break dinner for the evening. Having an online grocery database storage system would allow me to keep constant track of whether or not we have items as well as quickly query if any such items are expired. Further, if extended to also manage recipes, we could quickly build grocery lists, evaluate what we can make for dinner right now, and appropriately decrement our virtual pantry with one click.
The most necessary requirement for this project is usability. While I have plenty of nerd bones that would glad facilitate a tedious process to maintain a constant stock, I am not the only one who exhausts our pantry and consequently not the only one who should maintain this application. The application should be user friendly enough such that Kate also feels it's quick and seemless and the payout must be significantly greater than the investment.
Consequently, the project will require the development of 4 components:
1: A "Virtual Pantry": An SQL Database which maintains pantry state as well as groceries
2: A web application for making quick recipe entry and updates to the virtual pantry
3: An android application for maintaining a grocery list that queries current pantry state and push a shopping list to the database
4: (Future, depending on if QUALCOMM puts chips in any of the Android tablets) A tablet application optimized for recipe lookup and decrementing the pantry.
This has been largely facilitated by the development of converting Pogoplug devices in tiny LAMP servers with minimal power consumption. I tested one and was able to set up my device this weekend with a crap USB drive I had lying arojund. I have purchased a pair of 4 GB flash drives off newegg (one for this, one to repair my linux server) which will be used for this database.
More to come as the project continues.
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