I self-hosted one app for all the things I personal and stopped shedding receipts and manuals

If you’re something like me, your receipts are inclined to disappear into drawers, manuals get left within the Downloads folder, and restore prices at all times come as an enormous shock. Recurring jobs don’t fare significantly better, with mine often ending up cut up between calendar reminders and scribbled notes caught on the fridge.

I needed to see whether or not HomeLogger might change that absolute mess with only a single hosted database. I ran it on my current Home Ops server, utilizing Docker and SQLite. I then added a handful of my actual possessions, masking electronics, home equipment, and even a garden mower.

I hooked up all my manuals and scanned receipts, added in upkeep and restore information, and entered overdue duties. The actual query was whether or not this diminished my family admin or simply gave me one other app to disregard.

I lastly had one place to search for all the things

The stock grew to become helpful as soon as it stopped trying like an empty database

HomeLogger actually doesn’t make a powerful first impression. With nothing entered, the dashboard is usually empty and affords completely no hints on tips on how to enter your issues. Its usefulness solely grew to become obvious as soon as I began experimenting with the fields and filling them with my real-world belongings.

I added 14 of my most prized possessions, together with:

Each equipment report can retailer the producer, mannequin quantity, serial quantity, buy yr, value, location, and sort. That was helpful in and of itself, however the primary stock wasn’t what offered me on it.

My trusty Nivona espresso machine grew to become my first check case for a extra full report. I added in its upkeep historical past, restore notes, future duties, and two hooked up PDFs for the guide and buy receipts. Once these had been organized, HomeLogger stopped being a glorified note-taking app and began behaving like a real reminiscence support.

That was positively the largest win. HomeLogger isn’t particularly intelligent at cataloging issues, however it’s improbable at retaining the helpful historical past beside the family object itself.

OS

Linux or any Docker-capable host

Developer(s)

Francis Laboratories

HomeLogger is a light-weight, self-hosted residence upkeep and asset tracker for retaining equipment particulars, receipts, manuals, repairs, upkeep historical past, and recurring duties in a single place.

The upkeep reminders had been extra helpful than the stock

HomeLogger began incomes its maintain when the overdue pink duties appeared

The upkeep aspect of HomeLogger ended up being extremely helpful, however nonetheless a bit extra primary than I favored. Individual possessions, no matter whether or not they’re a hammer or a server, all dwell underneath “Appliances.”

The different sections within the menu, similar to HVAC, Electrical, Yard, and Plumbing, work extra like household-system logs, and the homepage pulls duties throughout from all of them.

I added in just a few lengthy overdue duties to see how my neglected maintenance would seem:

• Clean the air-conditioner filters
• Service the garden mower
• Inspect the photo voltaic inverter air flow
• Descale the coffee machine

HomeLogger displayed the overdue duties in shiny pink, which made them a lot tougher to disregard than one other calendar notification buried amongst all the things else.

The rewarding half got here after I accomplished a kind of jobs. HomeLogger requested whether or not I needed to report it as Maintenance or Repair, then robotically added it to the corresponding equipment historical past. I didn’t have to finish the duty, and I did not have to enter the identical occasion some place else.

That easy workflow might be one of many strongest components of this app. The stock tells me what I personal, and the duty and historical past inform me what I’ve really finished to it. That’s much better six months later after I’m making an attempt to recollect if I serviced the air conditioner or merely changed its filters.

Self-hosting it barely price me something

SQLite stored the entire thing light-weight and environment friendly

HomeLogger is so small that it doesn’t want its personal machine. In truth, I added it to my current Home Ops Ubuntu VM, which was already operating just a few Docker companies of its personal. Before set up, the VM had a modest 3.8 GB of RAM, with 1.1 GB used and a couple of.7 GB nonetheless out there. Its system disk additionally had a wholesome 39 GB free.

After submitting HomeLogger with 14 possessions, maintenance records, repairs, and paperwork, the applying itself was nonetheless extremely tiny, utilizing solely 23.94 MB of RAM. The total HomeLogger listing solely occupied 120 KB, together with a 92 KB SQLite database.

SQLite was an important alternative for the builders, because it shops all that structured info in a single small native database somewhat than requiring a separate server.

I additionally queried the database directly with Python and SQLite:

SELECT appliance_name, producer, location 
FROM home equipment 
WHERE appliance_name LIKE '%Nivona%'; 

The Nivona espresso machine report got here again alongside its upkeep historical past, restore, hooked up paperwork, and duties. There wasn’t any actual want to do that, nevertheless it was reassuring to see my family items and information had been safely saved in a approach that was easy to back up.

HomeLogger is best when you don’t want a list passion

Homebox tracks possessions higher, however HomeLogger asks a lot much less of me

HomeLogger is undeniably primary. There’s nowhere to place a photograph of your items, the classes are tremendous broad, and placing my Suzuki 4WD and RTX 2080 underneath “Appliances” felt a bit foolish. If I needed to construct an in depth catalog of each single factor I personal, Homebox would positively be fitter for function. It’s simply so significantly better at creating a correct stock.

That’s probably not what I wanted, although. I needed someplace barely extra structured than a spreadsheet or a pocket book for the main points I continually overlook:

• What the merchandise is
• What I paid for it
• Where its receipt or guide is
• What has already been repaired
• How a lot it has price
• What upkeep wants doing subsequent

HomeLogger handles these jobs fantastically, and it doesn’t demand something extra of me. The easy dashboard offers it an enormous benefit over stashing receipts in a drawer, and overdue jobs stick out like a sore thumb, so I can’t miss them.

Homebox is the only option if I wish to catalog my possessions with granular element. HomeLogger makes far more sense as a result of I simply need one uncomplicated place to report what I personal, maintain the paperwork centralized, and cease forgetting primary upkeep on stuff I would like.

It’s principally one step above jotting upkeep dates on paper, and that’s precisely why I’m going to maintain utilizing it.