Follow up question to hackathon

[christopher evi-parker]

Hi All,

This is a follow up post to a question I asked on coming up with an app to help small business owners.

I'm now at the hackathon!
and we've come up with an idea for an automated stock monitor, which watches a shelf to determine when stock is low and sends a text message. It consists of a cheap webcam module to attach to your network and web interface to setup (phone number and stock level to alert you at).

Have you had any problems in the past in keeping inventory? Is this useful?

Any feedback would be appreciated!


p.s.
As a bonus if this app gets made into something, responders get to use the app free for life (negative or positive feedback! then again all feedback is good!)

 

[ffox]

Is that a webcam for every stock.Item location?

 

[christopher evi-parker]

Is that a webcam for every stock.Item location?

Yup, one for each location. Also, potentially you could share webcams for a single location for two stock items (say two pallets, one with bags baking flour, and the other with sacks of cashew nuts)

 

[ffox]

Too many technical points of possible failure. It's been done for decades using weight sensing devices in or under the stock bin.
If stock locations are few a person with a hand held device, possibly smart phone, can check level against the running total generated by POS or POD. If stock locations are many use a robot (not really applicable to SME).

 

[christopher evi-parker]

Too many technical points of possible failure. It's been done for decades using weight sensing devices in or under the stock bin.
If stock locations are few a person with a hand held device, possibly smart phone, can check level against the running total generated by POS or POD. If stock locations are many use a robot (not really applicable to SME).

good points made.
Should have provided more context, this follows from a previous question on very small business (1-15 persons).
The ideal customer would be a very simple setup for someone whose running total is a single shelf or small pallet in their backoffice. Really small business. They might have one or two store locations. Usually their employees just phones them when running low (and may not have use of the company purse).
Of course there are very professional tools available (weight sensing, etc) but the price point is around £100s if not £1000 considering full professional integration.
POS is definitely an option but depends on integration (I used to work in POS retail as developer, so know a bit on this option).
This is throwing a bit of a DIY angle where potentially it could work really well or not (due to many points of failure). An alternate option for a small business owner to play with if it works.

The price point would be in £30-£50 with virtually little to no subscription cost.

 

[soundengineeruk]

Cheap Webcam, that could certainly lead to issues as you would have teach it differences of full, half full, partial full and empty shelf; including the shape of the content on the shelf.

As FFOX suggested a weight sensor, as that would be easier to update and manage than webcam.

 

[ffox]

POS is definitely an option but depends on integration (I used to work in POS retail as developer, so know a bit on this option).

Web Cam hardware comes in at around £20 per unit, add cabling and connectivity configuration and that's going to eat a large chunk of your entry price. I've never used video stream to trigger an event as there are too many simpler options available. You may have a handle on code to do this, but code must be maintained and updated as pointed out by @soundengineeruk . This adds too cost.

If I were doing this for a client I would use Office 365 or G-Suite and factor in the cost of subscription. The code free app development tools are already there and development time would be a fraction of traditional dev.
Your development plan also needs more thought.

The ideal customer would be a very simple setup for someone whose running total is a single shelf or small pallet in their backoffice.

This is too small a market place The app needs to be capable of scaling.

 

[fisicx]

Yup, one for each location. Also, potentially you could share webcams for a single location for two stock items (say two pallets, one with bags baking flour, and the other with sacks of cashew nuts)

Suppose I sell nuts and bolts. The number of products could easily be thousands and all in bins on racks. How is your idea going to work?

Or maybe a supplier of electrical component with tens of thousands of tiny plastic bags in trays.

Or building supplies with stacks of stuff all over a yard in the open (or 10 tons of sharp sand in a bunker).

I can’t see this ever working.

 

[AllUpHere]

It seems to me that it's only viable in the very simplest of applications. The problem with that, is that it's completely unnecessary in these really simple scenarios (when a person could check the stock level with a 2 second glance). I think you've massively over thought a solution for a problem that doesn't exist.