partkeepr-barcodes-and-TME.md (2984B)
1 Title: Barcodes, Partkeepr and parts providers(TME) 2 Author: paco 3 Date: 2018-03-08 4 Type: article 5 6 _Update 2021-05-29: I don't use Partkeepr anymore. It's been a pain to 7 maintain and update over time. I wrote [this nasty thing][7] which is good 8 enough for me._ 9 10 Electronic parts are small ... and they get smaller and smaller when you 11 go down the rabbit hole of SMD components. They are also really difficult 12 to organize and catalogue. There are useful tools like [Partkeepr][1] to 13 help you keep things tidy and, most importantly, don't buy things twice 14 because you can't find them or you don't remember where the hell they 15 are (or even don't remember that you have them). 16 17 The only drawback to that is that you have to manually insert all the 18 parts that you buy ... which is tedious. 19 20 I basically get my parts for 4 places: 21 22 * The _slow boat from China_, when piece is important and time is not. 23 * Ebay, basically same thing, although sometimes there are sellers in 24 Europe, which is nice ! 25 * [TME][2], a polish distributor with fairly good prices and good catalogue 26 that I tend to use when I need to be sure what I'm buying. 27 * And [Farnell/Element14][3], when I need something that I cannot find 28 anywhere else ... 29 30 It turns out that the last 2 have good APIs to query their catalogue. And 31 specifically TME adds a little iQR code to all their packages with some 32 info. 33 34 With any old webcam you can find, and [zbar][4], you can extract the info 35 on that iQR code easily, and dump it to `stdout`. It looks something 36 like this (this is a little 12V fan): 37 38 QTY:1 PN:HA50151V4 MFR:SUNON MPN:HA50151V4-000U-999 PO:xxxxxx/x https://www.tme.eu/details/HA50151V4 39 40 where: 41 42 FIELD NAME Desc 43 0 QTY Quantity 44 1 PN Part Number 45 2 MFR Manufacturer 46 3 MPN Manufacturer part number 47 4 PO Order Number (at TME) 48 5 Url of the product at vendor(TME) 49 50 51 That's easy to parse, and contact TME's API for more info. 52 53 I've put together a little python3 script that takes that from `stdin` 54 and makes all the necessary calls (to TME and then to Partkeepr), so I 55 don't have to enter my TME orders by hand anymore. You can find it 56 [here][5] 57 58 You'll need a token and secret from the distributor. So go to their 59 developer's [page][6] and sing in. 60 61 It downloads the datasheets too (if they have any) and uploads them to 62 Partkeepr. If the item is already in the db, it just increments the 63 stock. 64 65 On the git page you can find more info, but it's really easy to use, 66 just pipe the output of zbar to the script like this: 67 68 zbarcam --raw /dev/video0 | ./parteye.py 69 70 If I order something from Farnell I'll check if they do something 71 similar, so I can adapt the script. 72 73 [1]: https://www.partkeepr.org/ 74 [2]: https://www.tme.eu/ 75 [3]: http://farnell.com 76 [4]: http://zbar.sourceforge.net 77 [5]: https://git.e1e0.net/parteye/log.html 78 [6]: https://developers.tme.eu 79 [7]: https://git.e1e0.net/partsdb/log.html