The Skull Cinema

The final layer in our stack is the Grocy Android app , which provides a mobile front-end to the Grocy-Home Assistant installation and allows for camera-based barcode scanning. The program was written in Java by a pair of brothers, Patrik and Dominic Zedler, during the start of the Covid lockdown (see the About section of the ReadMe ). The app is currently on its 3 rd full point release after five years of development (currently v3.7.0), although only one of the brothers is still maintaining it. The update schedule is still relatively frequent at present and it is, like Grocy , now fully featured. So it should be useable for some time as is, even if development ceases. Also, as mentioned previously , there is a possibility of falling back to an SSL version of Grocy that will read barcodes natively (untested by me but on my list to check out). Support options are somewhat limited; there is an in-app FAQ, some of which is replicated on the GitHub FAQ page . But other than that ...

The next layer of the Virtual Bean Counter software stack is the meat in the sandwich, Grocy (see Grocy system install ). As with the Home Assistant (HA) Operating System that was reviewed previously the aim of this article is to consider the support and backup options for the Grocy system as installed onto our HA virtual machine . But first a little history. Whither Grocy ? It sprang from the desire of a software developer, Bernd Bestel , to progress beyond using Excel (as we know a great spreadsheet and data analysis tool but with a limited UI) to something more fully featured by exploiting his experience with commercial inventory management. The first version of Grocy was released in 2017 and after seven years is now on its fourth full point release . However, unlike HA, it is essentially a one-man band with a single developer responsible for pretty much the entirety of the content all without stable funding (currently). That said the package is quite mature and " does wha...

As discussed previously we should investigate each of the software packages involved in providing our virtual bean counter , so that if (when) problems occur we have a working plan for resolving them. As Home Assistant (HA) forms the base layer of the system, it is a reasonable point to begin at. So, where does HA come from? It was started as program to control Philips Hue smart light bulbs written by Paulus Schoutsen and has since grown into a large community-based IoT open source project on GitHub . How long has it been around? Since 2013 , so over 10 years now and the operating system (OS) software is on its 13th full point release . The OS is now provided via the Open Home Foundation and is financially supported by a single partner, Nabu Casa , but all three projects are led by mostly the same people. It is a mature offering supported by thousands of contributors (the most active project on GitHub by number of contributors) and is as fully supported as an open source pr...

Now we have validated that Grocy meets the requirements set out in the first post  this a good point to review the progress made so far. Starting with a quick reminder of the criteria that the system had to meet in order to be useful. These were pretty light. Firstly, the system had to be barcode-based and usable from a mobile device ( ie phone) and, secondly, it had to be able to track stock levels and, using re-order limits, automatically generate shopping lists. The availability of both of these features were confirmed by the test installation. However, Grocy is quite a bit more powerful than that; it is able to work forward from a menu plan and, given the associated recipes, examine available stocks to generate a shopping list; it can be used to track prices and nutritional information for individual items or meals; and monitor the expiry dates of the food stocks dependent on how they are stored or consumed. As the required functionality of Grocy has been confirmed. The nex...

After only a few hiccoughs along the way we are entering the final stage of the Grocy set-up procedure. Getting barcode scanning working should markedly streamline the process of dealing with products. As this was a test of the Grocy system it was definite that I was going to use the camera on my phone as a barcode scanner. But there are options around this choice if everything works as required and the system progresses into an installation phase. Although use of a phone camera is by far the simplest method of capturing barcodes, it is not the one suggested by Grocy's creator, Bernd Bestel . He recommends the use of a dedicated barcode scanner. These days they are not that expensive and a basic wired model can be found for as low as £12. Not that I think that this is a good idea unless you want to lose the mobility that we have just set up . For twice the price (still not that much if you are using Grocy routinely) you can get a wireless version, which should retain your freedo...

Now we have Grocy working , even if in skeletal form, the next hurdle is to cut the tie to the PC and go mobile. The advantages of being able to update stock levels on the hoof are obvious. All consume and purchase operations can be done at the point of use without the need to make notes and mark these up later. Inventorying can be performed at the storage location rather than dragging everything to the computer or more note making. What is needed, therefore, is mobile access to Grocy via a smartphone or tablet. There are multiple ways to achieve this. Web Browser The first and simplest method is to use the web browser on your device. Although, at least with Android devices, the browser is slightly finnicky about which address it will accept for the Home Assistant (HA) server. Using the standard homeassistant.local:8123 address results in an error message ' This site can't be reached DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_NXDOMAIN. ' There appear to be known problems with Android phones ...