I'm thinking about developing a calculator/inventory control program for mixers.
My background is IT. I've done a lot of programming around inventory control. I only stopped because so many people wanted variations for too many platforms (that's A LOT of work and A LOT of maintenance for one person).
If I was to consider tackling this, what is THE ONE platform that will give this the most bang for the buck?
Options are:
Windows (PC)
Mac
Android
web
What, no Linux?
Oddly, with the same poll in three places, you and u/sadistic_tendencies are the only people to mention Linux. Since that's the environment I work in, I'm going to have to keep that idea open.
I run juice calculator under Wine on Arch. Runs great and supports inventory management, although I don't use that feature yet. Somehow my brain magically remembers which of my 500-ish flavors I need to restock.
I use a Windows program on my PC, Recipe Calculator and love it but it has been several years since it has been updated. I think something happened to the guy that wrote it - he's been MIA as far as I've been able to gather. It would be great if a guy like you could get a hold of the code for it.
That said from a practicality stand point, web based would be your best bet. It could be accessible to everyone.
Though personally I have mixed feelings on what is available now online - e-liquid-recipes flavor list is a mess with several listings for one flavor. 99juices is another one that I signed up for when I first started mixing, added my inventory and now I can't login.
Windows. I'm another fan of Recipe Calculator that wishes it was still being updated.
Why not use Flutter and develop for IOS and Android at the same time?Flutter works for web too but is kind of wonky.
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edit: if not Flutter then just web.
IOS was not offered as an option because (a) I can't test them, and (b) Apple took all vape related apps out of the store.
There is another guy working on a app. He had some amazing ideas. Should team up with him!
From comments received, I've heard of two different projects and someone asked me if I'd just reach out to Lars and help fix ELR. Haven't made any decisions yet.
Eh ELR is a mess... But could be used for a data scrape..
The database contents is the worst part of ELR. And likely some of the defaults. And saving recipes as specific VG ratio/nic concentration.
Fix ATF. It's closer to ideal. But it needs a better way to update the flavor database and a update to include PDO/PEG in mixes. Then fixing the tagging system, including searches using tags, including exclusionary searches.
Yet another online calculator / inventory tool would be fairly stupid. (Just my opinion, of course.)
I've been contemplating making a recipe browser/editor myself. Python/Tk might suffice, and wouldn't be a single-platform deadend. Though, I'm more interested in using SciKit or the like to build a neural net for flavour matching/enhancing. (The data sets aren't quite there, but it's not too farfetched IMO.)
Don't mind hosting it? definitely go for an API and a nice webUI.
Need native runtime on many platforms? check out Nim (I also like Nim-Jester for web).
If neither fits the bill you can always interpret/virtualize.
I'm working on a marginally related Django backend w. a React frontend in my spare time. What langs are you comfortable with and are you planning to open-source it? I can probably contrib.
Web is best. Don't waste time on inventory control tho... Odds are less than a tenth of a percent of users will pick your site before they use any flavorings, and tracking usage only works correctly when you do that. And then there's issues of how empty can you get a bottle of flavor, how exactly the contents of the bottle was measured, and then there's the issue of how much volume was actually used considering everyone (should) uses 1ml=1g Splash a reminder on your mix screen to update flavor stash if any bottles are empty as a result of mixing. Maybe put a checklist box beside each flavor prompting for "reorder" if the amount seems low enough, and then people can look up/export/print a "to order" list..
But definitely a website. Android and iOS both support browsers, as does M$, Max and Linux, so that gives universal coverage.
Thanks for your thoughts, but I'm being reminded through this poll that there are already plenty of calculators out there. Inventory control seemed to be the sought after function. If I wasn't going to bother with inventory, I won't even start.
There's already several options with the rather pointless 'inventory control' (because it'll never be accurate)
You could make a better version of ELR or ATF, but other areas are more worthy of time.
What other "areas" should I look at? This question came from a conversation about the abundance of calculators but little in the way of IC. What other functions might a mixer want? FYI: if its just another calculator, I wouldn't do it. There's enough calculators out there.