# [[Homebox Inventory Management]] If you want to track your stuff around the house - which box that one rarely used equipment is in, and where in the house the box itself is in, then Homebox is perfect for you. It is an incredibly detailed software that is completely opensource. ## Links - **Documentation**: https://homebox.software - **Github**: https://github.com/sysadminsmedia/homebox ## Features The app lets you create two kinds of entities - Items and Locations. You can nest locations within each other. So, for example, your *label printer* can be added as an Item, stored in a location called *Ikea Box 3*, which is in another location called *Garage cupboard* in the location *Garage*. The app lets you print labels with QR codes for items and locations, and even arbitrary labels. The labels are meant for primarily this template: https://www.avery.com/templates/5260 ## Implementation It is written in Go and Vue. I really love to see a solid piece of full stack app with a web backend in Go. ## Requirements Given that it is mostly targeted at small groups of people, it is unlikely a lot of people are going to run multiple instances of it. The default configuration uses a local Sqlite database, that for me so far looks to be adequate for my needs. If I ever have to run multiple instances, I will figure out how to move the DB to Postgres (already a supported DB) so that the multiple instances can access it. Still, the item thumbnails also need to be stored on disk. So probably multiple instances need to share a data directory ## Maintenance Status The [Original author stopped maintaining in 2024.](https://github.com/hay-kot/homebox/issues/919) The current maintainers, Sysadmins media made [a reddit post](https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/1dicigm/were_working_to_continue_homebox/) and [a blog post](https://sysadminsjournal.com/were-continuing-homebox-development/)to announce that they are going to maintain a fork. So it seems to be in good hands. ## My Notes for docker deployment - The app has both a default (root) docker image as well as a rootless one which I use. - [The data directory needs to be chown-ed](https://homebox.software/en/installation.html#docker-compose) to `65532:65532` as per the user in the rootless image. ## Interesting community discussions - [An users report](https://github.com/sysadminsmedia/homebox/discussions/163) of how he organized his 3.5k items at home. An interesting idea from his experience - he decided to create the storage boxes as items themselves, instead of locations as I do currently. When you edit an item (and only when you edit it and not add it), you get a chance to use a parent item. He set the boxes to be the parent item for the contents. A nice discussion at the end with another user who felt the boxes-as-locations usage is more intuitive for people who dont care about photos for the boxes.