I’m able to get on remarkably well with grocery shopping without the use of any technology. Feel blessed.
Seriously, can all of this stuff please go away already?
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Grocy: web-based, self-hosted grocery and household management
101–110 of 152 posts
Re: Grocy: web-based, self-hosted grocery and household management
#102I appreciate the community effort but this thing is waaay too unfocused. Batteries, chores and a todo list? I've been using an app called Cinnamon to handle grocery shopping. The general idea is similar: define a bunch of things you want to keep in stock in your pantry. Every two weeks before a shopping run I do a sub-five minute scan. The app groups by category, which usually helps keep it fast. Anything I'm low on…
Link to the Cinnamon app? Didn't see something matching description when I searched in App Store.
I think it might be Android only, given the design is heavily compliant with Google's theming. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.imdevgary....
Re: Grocy: web-based, self-hosted grocery and household management
#103I love the idea of this, but in reality I can’t imagine the time and energy required to scan and keep everything up-to-date is offset by the benefits. Perhaps a current user can prove me wrong?
I guess you don't have to actually use all the features all the time. I'm doing some of this stuff using anylist where I've got recipes / meal planning / shopping list and it works pretty well. I don't care about keeping stock, but instead every time make a full shopping list, go to the kitchen, and remove things I already have.
Other features could be useful though - The list of batteries could be nice. House tasks as well.
Re: Grocy: web-based, self-hosted grocery and household management
#104This is exactly what I needed and was thinking about building a similar app. But to be really useful and automated, there's a bit long way I'm afraid. The biggest deal breaker is the time spend for the data entry and updates, leaving a pen-and-paper / notes solution still the most easy to use and just visiting local groceries and shops. I was collecting receipts and playing a bit with scanning of these, but the amoun…
Re data entry: was thinking this through a lot recently. Basically what I'd like to build requires either (1) product recognition vision like Google Lens offers, or (2) a barcode scanner and an extensive barcode product database. Both can be combined of course. My solution would be to read frames from a smartphone's camera until a barcode is detected. This can be achieved with eg Firebase ML, on-device. If a barcode…
"I thought about OCRing supermarket receipts too but these differ so greatly in layout etc. per country I figured it's not the way to go"
People usually shop at the same places and the same things, so they could identify the products in the receipts once and then only update the new ones. Also,You could crowdsource it.
Re: Grocy: web-based, self-hosted grocery and household management
#105Wow! I have been struggling to find exactly this for maybe years now. Other software always felt too limiting or specific, this is just about perfect.
I want to give this a go and see if I can do better than I do with spreadsheets.
Re: Grocy: web-based, self-hosted grocery and household management
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
Re data entry: was thinking this through a lot recently. Basically what I'd like to build requires either (1) product recognition vision like Google Lens offers, or (2) a barcode scanner and an extensive barcode product database. Both can be combined of course. My solution would be to read frames from a smartphone's camera until a barcode is detected. This can be achieved with eg Firebase ML, on-device. If a barcode…
"I thought about OCRing supermarket receipts too but these differ so greatly in layout etc. per country I figured it's not the way to go" People usually shop at the same places and the same things, so they could identify the products in the receipts once and then only update the new ones. Also,You could crowdsource it.
Yep but I was looking for a turnkey solution. What you describe are workarounds. I tried several grocery management apps, and a lot of these did just that: Prompt me for data when a barcode did not result in a matched product. This is not the experience I personally tolerate and am looking for. For an app to get integrated in my grocery shopping, product identification needs to work seamlessly and reliably
Re: Grocy: web-based, self-hosted grocery and household management
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I've always liked the idea of this sort of thing, but the benefits of using something like this almost never outweigh the costs as compared to just eyeballing the pantry and winging the meal planning on short timescales. The system starts to become the point of the effort rather than just a tool to better achieve household goals. Sounds a bit like GTD and other systems :/.
I think that GTD can actually eliminate overhead, but honestly it all depends on how good the ad-hoc system you are coming from was.
Well, so do I ; it was a gentle jab to people over-thinking their GTD or todo system ^^. My choice of words was quite poor.
Re: Grocy: web-based, self-hosted grocery and household management
#108Wow I'm so happy to have found this. Have you considered clubs, restaurants, cafes etc as a target market? If you wanted to start earning some revenue to host it I think there could be an opportunity more so than home users. We had started down the track of building a basic version of this for our ski club using MS "Power Apps". Our basic process is: 1. Pre-season: estimate requirements based on previous years and do…
I mean no offense, but the consumer version (as OP linked) strikes me as FOSS's answer to the IoT Fridge, a wholly unnecessary device itself.
I'm all about freeing mental bandwidth, but if you can't remember whether or you bought a piece of salmon yesterday, or if you can't be fussed to read the expiration date on a milk carton--adding "extreme attention to minor details" and "tedium" to the mix is not going to help.
The right idea here is optimizing restaurant workflows to minimize food waste/deal with seasonal availability/delivery schedules/etc./etc. Take that and slap a nice frontend + tier 1 tech support on top of that? Baby, you got a stew going.
Personally, as a pedant, I actually find this really useful for my current, home situation. :| thanks
Re: Grocy: web-based, self-hosted grocery and household management
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
Re data entry: was thinking this through a lot recently. Basically what I'd like to build requires either (1) product recognition vision like Google Lens offers, or (2) a barcode scanner and an extensive barcode product database. Both can be combined of course. My solution would be to read frames from a smartphone's camera until a barcode is detected. This can be achieved with eg Firebase ML, on-device. If a barcode…
Unless you can build a system that can identify the product as fast as you can pull it out or put in in the fridge or pantry, without holding a phone in one hand, it will be unusable.
Have you tried Google Lens? It offers an experience I'd tolerate, given that one finds a way to remove the need to tap the screen …
Re: Grocy: web-based, self-hosted grocery and household management
#110This is exactly what I needed and was thinking about building a similar app. But to be really useful and automated, there's a bit long way I'm afraid. The biggest deal breaker is the time spend for the data entry and updates, leaving a pen-and-paper / notes solution still the most easy to use and just visiting local groceries and shops. I was collecting receipts and playing a bit with scanning of these, but the amoun…
Absolutely agree with everything you've said. I had dreamed of a Libib[1] for my kitchen, but knew I would have to do all the painful data adding and it was too much of a bother. The other big challenge I never resolved was how you'd account for e.g. using 1/4 cup of flour out of a bigger volume. Or taken to its extreme, cooking oil. How do you know how much your 'splash' is? You can't predict the remaining volume wi…
Isn't this why "Alexa, add flour and olive oil to my shopping list" supposed make it so useful? You know when you are using something that you are almost out, and easy to say out loud to add to a list. It doesn't need to be so granular so something gets a reorder when there is only 2oz of olive oil left.