#542 – Component Management with Jan Rychter

Jan Rychter: This is The Amp Hour Podcast. Release May 17th, 2021. Episode 542. Component Management with Jan Richter.

Chris Gammell: Welcome to the Amp Hour. I'm Chris Gammell of Contextual Electronics. And I'm Jan Richter from PartsBox. Welcome, Jan. How are you? I'm just fine. Thank you. It is a beautiful Saturday morning. We're recording on the weekend.

Jan Rychter: I appreciate you taking some time on the weekend. This is an unprecedented time of parts shortages and supply chain issues. And as we talked about briefly before we started recording, you make software that is incredibly well-suited to this time. So could you explain what PartsBox is?

Dave Jones: Well, I guess I could say briefly that the software is designed to help you avoid losing your parts. PartsBox is an app that lets you keep track of your parts inventory, what you have. And then it lets you build stuff and keep track of what you use for your builds. And then it helps you with your purchasing. So that's basically what it's supposed to do.

Jan Rychter: Yeah. One of the things I think about is I've been doing builds lately and I have had to supplement out of my own stores, basically. You know, like I couldn't buy something out of distribution and I happened to have some stuff laying around. I mean, it wasn't, it was definitely not indexed in PartsBox or anything like that. I just basically had some old parts laying around. It was some microcontrollers that were critical to the project. I pulled those in and that was, that was the thing that allowed my build to move forward. And so thinking about keeping better track of it, keeping, knowing what I have on hand, it seems really critical these days.

Dave Jones: Yes, it does. And just to give you a bit of history, the tipping point for me, the moment when I decided I had to write something and basically solve this problem was when I ordered a bunch of parts and then I received the order and I opened my drawer where I keep my parts and I placed the new parts right alongside the exact same parts that I had purchased three months earlier. Yeah. Yeah. But I had forgotten about it. And I said, well, this is it. I can't do this anymore. I need to keep track of what I have. And that was for hobby building. That wasn't even for business at the time. So, yeah. So this is what PartsBox was supposed to do and help with. Keep track of what you've got. And then when you want to build something, how many of something do you need to purchase for your planned builds?

Jan Rychter: Yeah. Yeah. That is another thing that's relevant to my life. I've been doing a lab cleanup and basically consolidate. I had a bunch of old project boxes so specific to the project. They had, you know, I usually will, especially if it's a client project, I want to make sure that I have every single part that's in a build. And so for me, it's easier to then just order the entire bomb and have, I have probably 30 instances of zero ohm 0402 resistors and yet I don't need all those. And it seems like with PartsBox, I could instead go and say, okay, well, I have a reel of 0402 resistors. I know I'm going to need 300 of them for this upcoming project. I can then pull that off my PartsBox instance or rather just the, I could track that in my instance and go and clip it off the reel that I have and then operate like that instead of over and over and over again, buying in lower quantities, which also means that you probably can save money like this, right?

Dave Jones: Yeah, definitely. And the solution that you described, just purchasing parts for every project, buying all of it, is what many people do. Well, these days it's become somewhat more difficult. Yeah, right, right. You get the parts and if you have leftovers, you're definitely not throwing them away these days. You just keep holding on to them because every-

Jan Rychter: I have a capacitor box. I have a micro box. I have a power box. Yeah, I just throw them in there and I hope for the best, you know?

Dave Jones: And especially for chips. Every chip might be useful. You basically never know. Right, yeah. So it's even more important these days. But basically, yeah, the initial function of the software was to keep track of what you've got and when you want to build something, do you have enough parts for that bomb that you've just uploaded? And if not, how many do you need to buy so that you can complete everything? And then it has expanded from then on because it began basically as a hobby project and that was about six years ago. I was basically scratching my own edge because I wasn't happy with anything else out there. And then I decided to try and see if I can turn this into a business. Now, this is an incredibly niche type of business. Okay, right, right.

Jan Rychter: Like we said before the show, pretty much everyone who might want this may be listening to the show, hopefully is listening to the show or they might not know about it yet. But yeah, it's probably, you know, this is not, you're not gonna be, you're not gonna have a unicorn business anytime soon, probably.

Chris Gammell: Definitely not. However, it's super targeted. It is super useful to the people who do need it.

Jan Rychter: Could you tell us who you think the number one type of user is for PartsBox?

Dave Jones: Yeah, so there are basically two types of PartsBox users. The first group, the largest, are basically the listeners of this show, mostly hobbyists and makers for whom the PartsBox is provided for free. And just to clarify the intention here, this is not freemium. It's not supposed to upsell people to anything. The idea was really to be able to design the software so that it can be run sustainably and provided for free to hobbyists and makers. So that's probably the largest group.

Jan Rychter: So like you're saying, not drawing people in, it's not like you're gonna be upselling them over and over again to be like,

Chris Gammell: oh, move to the next version, right?

Dave Jones: No, no, definitely not. However, there is a split between hobbyists and businesses. So the way I'm trying to navigate this is that if you're running a business and making money on building electronics, then you should probably be on one of the paid plans. However, if you're not making money designing and building electronics, you should definitely not try to be on the paid plans and you should not even need the features in the paid plans. So it's sometimes a difficult line to navigate, but I'm trying my best to put as many features as I can into the free hobbyist plan and then still keep a sustainable business. So the commercial users are mostly small and medium companies that design and build electronics. And parts box is more on the building side than on the design support side. So my customers would be people, I mean, companies implying anywhere from one to, I guess, a hundred people. If you think of it, well, for example, Samsung, when they're building their next Galaxy phone, they will not be using parts of production. Right, right. But we're at a stage where a number of EMS companies are actually beginning to use. I have a group of customers who are medical device startups, for example, and they have very specific requirements for traceability. They need to know exactly which parts from which orders went into which builds with specific serial numbers. And that's a niche within a niche, I guess. But it's a good niche. It's a good niche to be in.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Jan Rychter: And can you compare us to the Samsung's of the world? I mean, so they're using like an MRP or MRP, is that the right acronym? MRP or ERP. Material resource. Okay. Yeah. So what does that look like versus what parts box is? Because it does seem very different.

Dave Jones: In a way, yes. Although the goals are really...

Jan Rychter: Just in usability, really. I mean, like, parts box looks nice. It seems friendly. You know, the MRPs I've used in the past have been... Yeah. They're basically databases. Like, you know, they're Oracle databases or similar. You know, like just huge.

Dave Jones: Exactly. Yeah. So the MRP or ERP systems are usually terrible. Okay. You really do not want to use them. And I really wanted parts books to be different. And I started approaching the problem from a completely different side. I started looking at what an engineer or a person building electronics in a small company really wants to do. And what's the way to implement this with the least friction? And this is how parts box is being designed all the time. So I'm trying to understand what my customers are doing, precisely the steps they are performing. And then I'm trying to design the software so that it helps them perform those steps. And ERP software usually comes from a different direction. It begins with a database where you are supposed to keep everything about your company. And then you design your UIs and you customize it for specific applications. And the result is never as good in terms of usability. However, the ERPs are much more general, I guess. You can do more stuff with them. So if parts box cannot perform certain operations today, well, it just cannot do them. And then you need to find some workarounds and wait for me to implement those operations. So there are drawbacks.

Jan Rychter: Yeah. Yeah. One of the things that... So I don't think I've used... I don't think I've been part of a large scale ERP, MRP since my time at Keithley because they actually had manufacturing on site and the purchasers were sitting on site. But it did seem like the big tie in there was the fact that it was the purchasing folks because they were buying so much material. There was so much money tied up in it. It was tied into the accounting system. It feels like there's a huge disconnect between the people who control the money and the people who need to set up all the parts and have it good to go. And also track it too, because you need to make sure that you're not overspending on USB to serial converters or something equivalent.

Dave Jones: Right. Right, right, right. Well, I'm trying to keep parts box as simple as I can. And that's for two reasons. One, I really don't want it to become a bloated piece of enterprise software. And the second reason is that my resources are very limited, so I can only implement so much. So I'm trying to implement the things which are the most important to my customers. And those end up the ones that are really practical. So on the purchasing front, for example, there's plenty of functionality that will help you with buying parts, but it will probably not help you with your accounting, for example, or keeping track of stuff that you sell. On this side, parts box does nothing for you. So it's really geared towards the engineering side of things, rather than the management or sales side of things.

Jan Rychter: Yeah, that's true. Yeah, I guess that is another thing that actually was part of it, was like kind of the cost roll-up. That was another thing that I remember management and purchasing was worried about, is like, if I'm selling a box for $500, and it's got 100 parts in it, just as an easy number, and each of those parts costs a dollar, well, that's one thing. But if I'm now buying them in smaller quantities, that is a higher cost per part, and that means my margin goes down. If instead I can buy lots and lots of parts at once and keep track of them, then my per part cost goes down and I get more margin. So there's always benefit in buying. I think everyone listening understands if you buy more volume, you get that benefit of cost reduction. But then you're also tying up cash, you have to hold the inventory, and so this also kind of ties into that as well.

Dave Jones: It's true, and this is a dangerous topic to basically even touch, because you would not believe how complex the meaning of, well, a seemingly simple term like price. What's the cost of a part? And if you look at a specific bump at a certain quantity, the term cost of a part is not clear at all. There are at least three different ways you can define it. And just to give you one example, let's say you're building 100 pieces of something and you need 100 resistors. So you could buy 100 resistors on cut tape, or you could buy an entire reel. Now, which price do you put in your bump? Do you assume that you will eventually use up all of that reel or not?

Jan Rychter: Right. Yeah, do you have to factor in wastage and even like the wastage when you're loading it onto the feeder, right?

Dave Jones: So this is actually easy, because parts books will calculate that for you with attrition parameters. But the difficult part is, do you assume that you will eventually use up the 2400 resistors that you bought in excess? Or do you assume that you discard them for this purpose? And if you use them eventually, well, that's just gain for you. So there are many ways to price things. And I've had very interesting discussions with my customers about how they want to approach this problem. There are many ways to scan the scan.

Jan Rychter: Yeah. Yeah. One of the things that I adopted from my Keithley time is the concept of standard cost. And they had some fancy accounting thing there. What I do is I basically, when I'm loading in things from like a DigiKey or equivalent, I'm basically putting a field in KiCad saying standard cost. And then I just go and grab the 1K price. And that's like the easiest way for me to do it. It's very unrealistic, right? It's like, okay, I'm usually not buying 1,000. But what I want to do is I want that 1K budgetary price usually to hand off to a client to say, look, if you are building 1,000 or so of this thing, then you can expect about this bomb cost. There are always going to be shipping costs and all the other things that are loaded on top of it. But I need that some kind of estimate. And that's the best that I've come to standardize on.

Dave Jones: Right. So this is actually one of the reasons why I've built the bomb pricing functionality into PartsBox. I was basically tired of dealing with spreadsheet bombs. And these days, I tend to think if you have your bomb in a spreadsheet, basically stop doing it. Because that really doesn't get you anywhere in the long term. The problem with spreadsheet bombs is, first of all, they are obsolete the moment you finish them. And everything in them becomes obsolete immediately. And there is no easy way to update it. You basically have to go manually through all the parts and update them. And the other issue is that many customers have to deal with multiple currencies. And there is no easy way to do that in your bomb. And especially if you work in a multinational setting, you will have some parts sourced in euros and some in dollars. And there will possibly be a third currency. And you need to manage all that. And then there are the MOQs and the minimum order quantities and the order multiples and the quantity out which you're building and so on. And eventually, even if you get on top of all that and you have a bomb for your entire project and probably priced, then you're often at a situation where you're not building one thing. You're building two or five or ten different projects. And you want to – there are some parts which are in common between them. And you would like to price them all together because you might be making a bigger purchase then. So it might make sense to have a combined purchase list, so to speak, a combined bomb of all those. And that's still somewhat tractable. But when it really breaks down is when you have part substitutes or alternates, as people call them. So especially right now in the days of part shortages, you often want to specify that a certain component might be substituted with another part. So Partsport lets you do that. And the whole pricing engine that I described is able to take that into account and let you delay the decision, defer the decision on which specific part to buy as long as possible. So you really want to see what's available in the market right now today and then use that and use that for pricing and use that for your orders.

Jan Rychter: Yeah. Yeah. I'd like to talk about like customer part number, I think is – or well, I guess – CPN, right? That's like the customer part number versus MPN, which is manufacturer part number. I think I remember either having a conversation with you in person or online. But basically, you are a very big proponent of this, of setting up your own part numbers and making sure that you're only sourcing those and using those in bombs. Is that a fair representation?

Dave Jones: Yeah. That's pretty fair, especially for passives or any component which might have a number of substitutes. My suggestion is always to design your own part numbering scheme and define those in parts by cycle, the meta parts. So it's a part which does not have a direct physical corresponding component, but it contains many substitutes. So you might – well, let's take an example. You might define a 0603, 1 microfarad, X7R, 16 volt cap. And that would be a meta part. Oh, one of the rare components that's out there, huh?

Speaker ?: Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: And then you would add a number of substitutes. So you would say, okay, you can use this part from Samsung and this one from AVX and this one from Murata. And they are all equivalent for your projects.

Jan Rychter: Yeah.

Dave Jones: So what you do then is what you put into your bomb or into your Kika design, for example. You put 0603, 1 micro, X7R, 16 volts. And this is what travels through your designs. And PartsBox lets you then delay the decision of which specific part to buy until very late in the game. And most importantly, these days, it lets you substitute something else very late without going back to your cap tool.

Jan Rychter: Yeah. Yeah, that's a great point because I think that's a lot of the – so right now, I don't do that. I use just MPN as my main key parameter. And so what happens is I get to the point where I'm like, okay, I'm ready to order parts, send it in my assembler or do a prototype build myself. And at that point, I have to then go and change – I have to either do the change at the time when I'm ordering from a Digikey or Mauser and doing it just kind of on the fly, which is dangerous. Or I have to then go and say, okay, that one microfarad capacitor is not available. And then I have to go and back and say, okay, what is available? Then go and back populate that into my BOM and say, yeah, the CRC 0603 whatever is not there. But the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, other part is. And now that's my new official part number.

Speaker ?: Right.

Dave Jones: And it gets even more complicated if you have several BOMs to deal with, if you're running several projects in parallel. So, yeah, so meta parts were supposed to solve that problem. And to a certain extent, they do. They're also useful for parts. Well, I'm afraid I'll get started on a rant about MPNs. Because we have a big problem in the industry of part identity. There is no universally accepted way to identify a certain component. And this is fairly weird to me. I've been doing some consulting stuff with the food industry recently and with RFID. And these guys over there, they use what is called GS1. It's an organization that assigns barcodes, essentially. And they don't have an identity problem. They know exactly anything you see in the supply chain, anything you buy in a supermarket has a unique number. Why can't we have the same thing in the electronics industry? We have the system of MPNs, which are not unique. And then we have manufacturers. And then we have manufacturers who play interesting tricks. I think it was, I heard it the first time on The Amp Hour. And it's a huge problem for TI customers. TI has chips which usually end with R or T at the end. So you get something with an R or T. It's the exact same chip. It's the exact same part.

Chris Gammell: And sometimes they're priced different on a distributor side too, which is really weird.

Dave Jones: The interesting thing is that one is supposed to be a reel and one is supposed to be cut tape. But then distributors will often buy reels and then cut them into cut tape. So you might see an R part which will be delivered to you on cut tape. And the pricing might be all over the place. I mean, from TI, usually the reels are cheaper if you buy full reels. But then if the distributor cuts it into tape strips, those might be more expensive than the reels. I mean, so there's really no way to tell. But from the point of your design, those two parts are exactly equivalent. So you should be able to use them and substitute one for the other, at least for small quantities. So this is an example where meta parts really help. And a lot of my customers, what they do is for every TI chip that they use, they set up a meta part. And they have two substitutes, one with an R at the end, one with a T at the end. And it lets them handle them equally. And they find that depending on the distributor and the time of year and the face of the moon, one or the other might be cheaper or available.

Jan Rychter: Oh, okay. And then they'll make the, basically the just-in-time part of their decision-making is around just price and purchasing that and not design capabilities or specifications.

Dave Jones: Yes, exactly. So if from the point of view of their design and manufacturing, if the two parts are really equivalent, the moment they have to make a decision is when they turn a purchase list into orders. That's something you usually do in parts box. So the usual process goes like this. You have a bomb or several bombs. And then you tell parts box that, well, I would like to build 10 pieces of this and 100 pieces of this. And let's say 1,000 pieces of that bomb. And this all gets thrown into a cart. That's how I call it, for lack of a better name. And the cart, you turn that into a purchase list. That's the combined list of all the components from all your bombs multiplied by the quantities that still has those meta parts in it. Okay. We still haven't resolved that individual parts. And then you look at what's available in the market. And those are offers. That's how we call them. And this is the moment when you choose. So you pick your distributors. And there's some automation which lets you define interesting rules. Like, for example, I would like to buy everything from DigiKey. And then if they don't have it available, I would like to go to Mazer. And if that isn't available, I would like to go somewhere else. So there are certain automation rules. And you turn that into orders. And that's when you actually decide which specific parts you will physically order. So I'm trying to facilitate that whole process. It's still not as easy as I would like it to be. I would like it to be fully automated so that you can just click order and have the parts delivered to you. But we're getting there.

Jan Rychter: Yeah. Yeah. So can we just step through one of the meta parts examples? Because I mean, you had explained the automation piece. But the thing I'm not sure about is, so when does the rubber hit the road in terms of... So if I have 0603, I'm looking at one of the... Actually, I should mention, we're looking at the demo version here. So we're going to be talking about everything we talk about here. We're all in a shared context. There's a demo. If you go to partsbox.io.com. Oh, .com. Oh, I didn't realize you got .com. Yep. Partsbox.com. And then click on demo. It will take you to exactly what we're looking at. All the same data we're looking at here. And so 0603-1UF-X7R-16V. That's the part that Jan already mentioned and that we're going to talk about here. So I put that into my KyCAD bomb. KyCAD bomb spits out to a spreadsheet? What does it spit it out to, I guess? Does it take in KyCAD stuff?

Dave Jones: So I'm still working on a KyCAD plugin. I would really like to have one. But right now, the best way is to just export a CSV. And then you import that into partsbox.

Chris Gammell: Okay. Right. Which is basically what a plugin would do anyways, right? It's just one step removed yet.

Dave Jones: Yeah, but the plugin would be somewhat smarter. The KyCAD has several ways of exporting the bomb. And there needs to be one simple way. And I'm trying to get that streamlined so that it's easier. Got it.

Jan Rychter: Well, that's okay. Okay. So we're going to export to CSV right now, import it. So the actual choice of switching that 0603, the meta part number to an actual part number, right? So if you click into this part here, I see that there is C0603, C105K, yada, yada, yada, from whoever this is from. I can click on that. I can click on that part itself. It lists it as being a Kemet part in the actual one. And it says the stock on hand is 2,500. So it could pull from there. It could pull. It could go in order from DigiKey or mouse or whatever. So when does it actually... Do you have to click each one to say, I want this one? I want that one. How does that work?

Dave Jones: There are basically two points in your workflow when you need to make the decision. One is if you want to buy parts. If you're preparing to build something and you want to place your purchase orders, you normally build that purchasing list. And when you turn that into order, you have to choose a specific offer. So PartsBox will present you with the offers for all of those substitutes together, sorted by price, for example, and availability. And that's when you pick. Or you can let PartsBox pick for you. It does a pretty good job with automated selection of offers. And so that's when you're buying. And the other point where you need to make a decision is obviously when you're building. So if you go into that project, if you go into projects and then click on that single demo project, and then you go into builds, it'll let you start a build. So when you're starting a build, you obviously need to choose which specific parts from your collection you will be using. If we start a build for that project, you will still see there is the meta part in there. There are actually several meta parts. The 06031 micro farad part is at the very bottom of the table right now, for me at least. And you can open that row of the table, unroll it, so to speak. And you will see that PartsBox considers various substitutes for that part for your specific build. Oh, yeah.

Jan Rychter: And this is actually a good point too, because so then we have location, which is another thing we'll talk about here. But this is a really good example, because one of the listed ones, it says it's on pick and place feeder too.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Jan Rychter: And so that is a very common scenario where you might already have, say you've got a bunch of, you know, one micro farad caps you're using all the time. You leave it on your Neoden or equivalent or, you know, and you just have it there. Now you can just keep track like that. That's really cool.

Dave Jones: Yeah, that's a very common use case. So a lot of my customers have their own pick and place machines, which, to be honest, was somewhat surprising to me. I thought people mostly outsource manufacturing these days, but it turns out that's actually not true. So which are you seeing the most common? I don't actually ask them about the specific types. The Neodians are out there, but I did hear about some other names, but I'm not really.

Jan Rychter: The Charm highs, the desktop ones are the ones that I've seen a lot of. There's that open source, not open source, but the OpenPNP. Colin O'Flynn talked about it. I think Nate Ziedel from SparkFun. There's like, basically, it's like a pretty low cost one that had OpenPNP.

Dave Jones: Yeah, but the ones I'm seeing are somewhat larger. So they would be like industrial machines, just not the full size ones for really high volume manufacturing, but something that would fit in your garage, for example, not necessarily in your room. So yeah, so many customers have those feeders in place, and they would typically have like 32 reels loaded onto the machine, or even more. So PartsBox lets them keep track of what's on the machine. And this is the moment when you start to build. That's when you need to select and physically pick, do I place this component or do I place the other component? And this is really the last moment where you can make that decision. I mean, there's no point in delaying that. Right, right.

Jan Rychter: Yeah, and especially like, so at the top, there's also build batch size, right? So you can say, I'm going to build 100 of these or 25 of these. So I selected 25, and then it already calls out, hey, look, TPS 6110, 61161 DRV. I don't have enough. You don't have enough on hand, so you better go and order them. And so then you can actually go and make that choice.

Dave Jones: Yeah. So the build table is something that people spend a lot of their time in, and both for experimentation, just to see how many I can build, and then when actually building. So customers typically would configure their build. They would say, I will use this part as a substitute, and then I will build this many. And what is also interesting, it lets you, perhaps you notice there is a default part source selection, and it says FIFO, LIFO, last access, and so on. So when you have your parts inventory, and you typically gather a lot of instances of a certain part, you bought one batch of this resistor one day, and then you bought another batch another day. Those batches are called lots, typically. And then they might be in various locations somewhere in your warehouse. But for a build, you want to use them up in a certain order. For example, first in, first out, the ones that you bought least recently. So the oldest parts you want to use at first. Or you want to use last in, first out, or some other order. And this lets you kind of automate that decision. So again, this is not something for hobbyists. And in fact, I don't think it's present in the hobby plan. But for companies, it's a lifesaver, because it lets them quickly, automatically decide which parts they are going to use, and where they will get them from. And the next step in the build is obviously the picklist. So it's something that you use. Actually, if you click next in that build table, it will take you to the picklist. And that tells you where you need to go in your warehouse collection or garage, and which parts you need to get ready so that you can build what you want to build.

Jan Rychter: So I'm in the picklist. And people can follow along, like we said, if you're following the demo thing. We're in WLED controller, V1.1. So that's the only demo project that's in there. So I'm in the picklist. If I select all the boxes, does that mean I'm picking those parts?

Dave Jones: So the checkboxes are here only for aesthetic purposes, really. They're only for you to know that you already have those parts. But they don't really...

Speaker ?: Got it.

Jan Rychter: Just to track yourself.

Dave Jones: Yeah. They don't really serve any purpose at this point. Because doing the picklist is not really mandatory. It's something that's supposed to help you. You can also export that to a spreadsheet or print that as a PDF. But in general, this is something so people would go and pick the parts. And once you have those parts in hand, you can actually go ahead and perform your build.

Jan Rychter: Okay. That's great. That's great. Okay. So then add stock to... Oh, okay. So now it's also saying one of these things is not... Because I'd said 25 build, I'm building a 25. It's now calling out, hey, one of these is not going to be enough, I think. Add stock to corresponding sub-assembly part or something like that.

Dave Jones: So it's going to warn you that some parts are missing. It'll still let you go ahead. And that's one of the major design decisions. So parts books will let you do many things which might... Strictly speaking, they might not make sense. But it turns out that in real life, there are often exceptions. And people make mistakes. And you do want the ability to override the software sometimes and tell it, well, really, I do feel that I'm capable of building this, even though you don't know about the parts, but I do have them on hand. So it lets you do that. It lets you go ahead.

Jan Rychter: Take that, computer. Yeah, exactly.

Dave Jones: But this is something really important. If the software is too strict, it becomes not usable. So I try to let people override those decisions.

Jan Rychter: And they use it a lot. You start getting like... Actually, I remember tracking this when I used to do web stuff a little bit. But there are certain tools where you can track frustrated clicks or clicks of fury, where someone's just clicking. And they're like, no! And they're clicking, clicking, clicking, you know? And yeah, I think the more restrictive your software is, the more likely that'll happen. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah, this is interesting. So then you have a build ID, which is just a unique ID, which is great. Is the idea here that then you're going to basically use that as you're tracking? So you might print that on a label and stick that to all the 25 boards that you're building?

Dave Jones: Yeah. So this is interesting because we're getting into traceability territory, which I think is a fascinating topic. So what this lets you do, if you actually go back into builds and click on completed, you will see a list of completed builds. And each one of those will have a build ID.

Jan Rychter: Yeah.

Dave Jones: And it shows only the short build ID. The full ID is actually quite a bit longer. And you can easily turn it into a QR code that you place on your build. And this identifies that specific build that you performed. And Piratebox will remember exactly which parts you used. So for example, if you have a meta part, it will know which substitute you used for that build. If you use lot control, it will tell you where the parts came from, which specific order. So you will know that this build, for example, used the resistors that were bought from DigiKey on that specific day and with this order number. And for some companies, it's just a convenience. For some, it's a luxury. And for some, it's a legal necessity. Like when you're building medical devices, for example, you're required to do this. And what many people don't know is that when you're a medical startup in the US, for example, you're supposed to be doing that stuff very, very early on. Not when you're ready to go to market. When you're starting to design something.

Jan Rychter: Your first prototype might also be tested or might end up in your evaluation for the FDA, right?

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. So many startups go through this moment where they discover, they bring in a consultant that tells them about the FDA rules. And then there's this, oh, moment. We should have been doing that. And yeah, lots of paper is needed afterwards. Got it. Nice. Yeah, no, this is really great. Yeah. Yeah. So this helps with traceability. And I think it's also important for more and more companies these days. And it lets you keep track of exactly what you use, where it goes. And then if you get failures, you can actually investigate those failures. And you can do recalls if needed. So it's very flexible. And basically, the software does most of the work for you.

Jan Rychter: That's great. So let's talk a little bit about the, oh, so we talked a little bit about barcodes. I want to talk about barcodes more broadly, but I also want to talk about kind of the overhead of all this stuff. So one of the things that has prevented me from kind of digging into this more broadly is just thinking about the amount of time it takes to get set up with this. What would you estimate that it takes to get started and start to get into this workflow?

Dave Jones: Yeah. So the biggest problem here is getting control of your existing inventory. Depending on how many parts you have, that could be a major undertaking. And what I usually tell, I mean, and there's really no way to get around that. I mean, somebody needs to physically inventory those parts and enter them somewhere. And I'm trying to help with this process as much as I can, but it really is something that you need to do yourself. And it's a major barrier. I'm not sure there is a good solution. What I usually advise people to do is if you're a hub-based, don't try to inventory everything immediately. Just do it a bit at a time. So basically set up your storage locations where you will keep your parts as parts box will index them. And move them slowly from the general box where all the stuff is and put them into the ordered storage compartments where you will keep them eventually. One interesting note while we're being there. When you organize your storage, if you use a tool like parts box or any other tool of this kind, you don't need to organize parts by category. And you don't need one compartment for every part, which is actually a major advantage. So you need fewer drawers and the ones that work best are larger boxes like for hardware, for screws and the like, where you put bags with your parts. And then you have larger boxes for reels. So for hobby usage, that's actually great because you'll be printing labels for those parts anyway, usually with barcodes, but even if not. And then what you end up is you end up with a small box where you have like 15 or 30 bags with parts. So if you're looking for one specific part, it's fairly easy. Parts box will tell you which box to open. And then it's fairly easy to find that one part that you're looking for. And you don't need to split them into single part compartments, which is a lot of work. And those tiny little SMD compartments, I could never get around to using those. I thought that was always way too much work.

Jan Rychter: Yeah, I think that's purely for prototyping too. I mean, my friend Dan Hinch, who's been on the show, he just was moving as well. And he basically moved all of his stuff from reels into little individual boxes. But that was just to consolidate all the packaging, right? From all of the single, you know, the reels, the cut tapes of 10s and 20s at a time, just to cut down on space, which makes sense. But using those then for an actual like prototype larger scale build or putting it onto a pick and place machine would be like, no, I don't think that would be realistic.

Dave Jones: So something that many people do, including myself, is they buy a reel of parts and they keep a reel in a large box somewhere. And they cut off a strip and they keep a strip in a different place as parts on hand, so to speak. And luckily, well, if you're using a spreadsheet to track your parts, that's a bit of an issue. But parts box will let you track this, no problem whatsoever. So this is actually quite convenient. When you run out of parts on that strip, you just cut off another one from the reel and you move your stock from the reel to the other location. And this is a pretty convenient way of dealing with that without having to actually physically take out those components and put them into tiny boxes, which I think is a lot of work.

Jan Rychter: Yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah. And I think that that's what I really think about is like the amount of not just work, but also like the kind of the mindset of it all. You know, the rigor of keeping track. And what am I trying to say? It is discipline. It is discipline. It's the discipline of like, you know, keeping track of this stuff. You know, we've all felt the pain of getting to the end of a reel and be like, oh, God, I just need three more. And now you have to wait for an order. It's like, so there is that feeling of knowing, knowing that the feeling of knowing the consequence of doing it. But that usually is somewhere off in the future. That's what future Chris has to deal with. You know, now Chris has to deal with printing labels and scanning in parts and all that other pain.

Dave Jones: So parts box does try to make it somewhat easier for you. So one example, if you have parts which you bought from a distributor, you can connect a USB barcode scanner to parts box. Or if you're a commercial customer, you can actually use the webcam on your computer as well. And you basically show the back to parts box. And it's usually pretty good at guessing what's in there. And even the quantity, if it's in the barcode, those 2D barcodes, by the way, the more modern ones are perfect for this. So indexing a collection of parts which you bought, for example, from DigiKey is not that difficult. Oh, great. However, you still need, I mean, once you've scanned the bag, you need to, parts box knows the part, the MPN, and it knows the quantity. But it doesn't know where you will put the bag. So you still need to tell parts box where you will put it. So you need a storage location system. So there is always some overhead. The nice thing about this discipline that you mentioned is once you get into it, it feels kind of like hygiene at a certain point. So it's like brushing your teeth. In my workflow, for example, the parts that I haven't entered into parts box, they're considered lost. But they basically don't exist for all practical purposes. Because I will probably never find them. I will probably buy them again because I won't know that I have them. But overall, there is this big hump at the beginning that you need to get through, index whatever you have. And afterwards, it's pretty easy because what you do is you order your parts. And when you receive them, you scan them, which takes a couple of minutes. And that's it. And you're done. It's a pretty nice process. And the USB scanner beeps very satisfyingly. Yeah, right. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, there is some nice feedback stuff elements there. Yeah. So this isn't very bad. And also one more thing, if you're ordering from through parts box, so if you've prepared your order in parts box, I'm trying to help you order and close the loop as much as I can. So you'll be able to copy and paste your order from parts box into a distributor website. And that works for several major districts. And it'll appear there all filled out. And the great thing about that is that parts box will insert special ID codes into every line item and into the order. When you place the order, when you receive the order, that works especially well with DigiKey, by the way. When you receive the order and you scan the label, your specific ID for that order will be recognized by parts box because they print the labels on demand. And this is fantastic because you just scan it and parts box knows that it's this specific part in this quantity from that particular order. So it can also mark the orders as receipt. So it kind of helps close the entire loop and makes the whole process somewhat less painful. But it's still not as smooth as I'd like it to be. I'd really like to be able to place orders automatically so that you can go from a purchasing list, split that into several distributors and just click order. And that's it. And then receive it with a couple of scans.

Jan Rychter: The distributors are working on better API access, I think, but I'm not sure about the purchasing side of things yet. I know that they have like data APIs, but I'm not sure about the ordering API side of things yet.

Dave Jones: The distributor API story is a long one. And I'm afraid it might take some more time until we get the full automation that people would really like to see.

Jan Rychter: Yeah, I mean, software, I mean, much like this, right? It's like software is coming to the electronics industry a little behind the rest of the world. But I think we're all seeing the benefits of it now that it is here. This kind of tool is great for that sort of thing. Yes. Yes. Let's talk about the label printers because it's actually one of the first times that I like really, you know, obviously I've known you. I've talked to you online a lot. We met in person. But the first time that I was like sold on the idea was I was talking to Alvaro Prieto's, you know, the co-host of Unnamed Reverse Engineering podcast. And he and I were at Chaos Communication Camp and he was talking about his label printer. And it was a love story about a label printer. And I ended up getting a label printer as a result. So Alvaro is a great example of someone who's implemented a system and talks about it often. How does the label printer kind of fit into this whole setup?

Dave Jones: What I would love to see is for you to be able to click print in PartsBox and get a label right away. Now, this cannot happen right now. And the problem is that PartsBox is an app that runs in a browser. It's basically an online in-browser app. And browsers have those sandboxes and they don't let me access USB devices or anything on your network. And the access to printers is really terrible. I mean, it's good if you want to print a PDF, but it's not really useful if you want to design and print a label. So it's something I've been struggling with. I do have a bunch of label printers that I bought that I would really like to make usable with PartsBox. But right now, the only way to print your labels is basically to export data as CSV, load it up in the printer software, and then print the labels, which is not optimal. It's not a huge bang if you do this for several parts at a time, but it's certainly not what I would like to see in the future. So it's something I'm thinking about. There's little I can do in the browser. Possibly in the future, there will be a version of PartsBox, which is packaged as a standalone application with more access to local devices, which will let you print the labels immediately. And this is a big deal. This is a big feature because it's not just for when you're indexing or receiving parts, but also when you're doing production. You really want to print the labels to place on your devices or your PCBs or your especially partially completed PCBs because we didn't go into that. But there are multi-stage builds in PartsBox.

Jan Rychter: Yeah, let's do that. Let's do that. The multi-stage builds thing too, because that's interesting.

Dave Jones: Let's take a look at the builds tab again in the example project. When you start a build, you have an option on the right which says start a multi-stage build. And this is somewhat interesting because what it lets you do is lets you select which parts you will be placing or building in every stage of the build. And the idea here is that you might want to start a build initially perhaps with no parts, just a simple comment just to get a serial number onto the boards. And then you might do SMD. And then later on, you might do the through-hole parts. Or for some boards, there might be many more steps in the process which a board needs to go through. So this lets you track the steps. And a build is considered to be in progress until you decide that you've finished it.

Jan Rychter: Yeah, I mean, that could be great even for firmware programming, testing, all the way through calibration. I guess you could add as an element to each of these things. And personally, right now, I only track that through a spreadsheet, and it's pretty messy too. So again, having access to a barcode scanner style thing would be nice.

Dave Jones: Yeah, so here the idea is that the build gets an ID, and whether it's finished or not, and it's going to be the same ID. And then you can track at which stage it currently is, and then you can enforce certain rules in your company, what stages a build needs to go through. There is some automation planned for this in the future for basically enforcing that everything needs to go through certain stages. Right now, it's mostly manual. But still, it helps you keep track of stuff that you have in progress. And this is also where labels and barcodes are really, really important. So it's something that I would really like to improve, but the reality, unfortunately, of the browser world prevents that. And it's one of the major issues that I'm facing.

Jan Rychter: Yeah, I mean, so in terms of when you print it, so if I receive in a digikey package, right, and I get, again, let's just go with the 1 microfarad. I get a new reel of the 1 microfarad, say it's a reel of 5,000 capacitors. I scan the barcode on the reel, or maybe on the bag that has the digikey stuff on it. That then comes into PartsBox. Will it then spit out a new label? Is that the idea?

Dave Jones: So my suggestion would be if you have something which is very well labeled, like the digikey part, just don't print your labels. I mean, it's labeled already. And PartsBox doesn't really care. Got it.

Jan Rychter: Because it's all trackable in the system, right? It doesn't need to know that it's different.

Dave Jones: PartsBox is smart enough. When you show that label to PartsBox again, it will tell you that, oh, I found this part. You have this part, and it exists in this location. Would you like me to remove stock? Are you removing? Or are you adding more stock of this part? So it gives you options. So the easiest way is basically not to do anything and not print any labels. What I would label is your storage locations. I mean, the boxes or the compartments, you need to know what they're called so that you can tell PartsBox where you're putting your parts. But for actual parts, I wouldn't label them. So the moment the labels are useful is when you cut off a piece of that reel, and you have a strip of tape, and you put that into its own bag. So that's when you really need a label because you don't know what's in the bag. And the way I deal with this and the way most people deal with this is they do this for a bunch of parts at a time. So if you've added 10 parts and you've prepared the bags, then you select them all, export their data as CSV, and print it from the label manufacturers' printing software. The other problem with labels is that every manufacturer has a different way of designing those labels, and there are issues with formatting and sizes and whatnot. So PartsBox can't really become a tool for designing labels. So I need to find a way to, you know, interoperate with all that software somehow. Right, right. So that's just one solution right now. So in the future, what I expect is that there will be a standalone version which will support zebra printers because of their printer language, basically. And you'll be able to design your own label in PartsBox with a little bit of programming skills and then print those automatically.

Jan Rychter: Cool. Yeah, I mean, as you mentioned, like the printing out of like location trackers and stuff like that, too. I actually was, I had like a quick flashback again to my Keefla days because that was the only place where I was really on site with manufacturing. But like me, like sneaking through the aisles of the actual stock and like needing to go and get a couple of parts for a test or whatever. But then I had to fill out a, I had to fill out a certain piece of paper or form and it went into a bag that was like on the door. And basically some, some poor manufacturing person had to then go and read my chicken scratch and try and actually then remove the stock. And it was all, I mean, it was basically, it was all manual at that point, too. It was basically, you know, I was, Chris was pulling out five op amps to go and do a test with. But between when I wrote and dropped that piece of paper in the bag and when it actually got entered by the data person in manufacturing, those five parts were kind of Schrodinger-esque in a way. They did or didn't exist in the system, you know, and so that was problematic. Whereas here is basically, I would then go and type it into parts box and say, hey, I just took five parts, deal with it. And it's, and it's immediately there.

Dave Jones: Yeah. So this is actually, I'm glad you mentioned it. It's, it's, it's actually one of the big driving decisions for parts box and a big part of why it's an online app and not something you install on, on your local computer. When there's a company where there is more than one person and somebody takes off stock or makes, or makes any changes basically anywhere. The other people should see this immediately. And in parts box, the updates are real time. So anytime two people access one database, every one of them will see the real time state of the database. And this was really important from the very beginning, because I think it doesn't make any sense any other way. That's basically the way it needs to be. And also I, I get asked this a lot. There's a lot of kind of a knee jerk reaction. People do not like online apps and people would much, would much rather have something that they control on their computers.

Jan Rychter: Yeah. Are they really saying that you don't want to pay for it monthly though, versus. No, it's, it's, there are two, two separate. It is the online piece.

Dave Jones: One is the subscription. One is the online aspect. So the online aspect, I mean, the, the, the main reasons are because you will eventually want to access your data from many places. And even for hobbies, I mean, if you think about it these days, we usually have a lab computer or a laptop that we take into the lab and another one, which we use in another place. So you typically do not want just one computer to be able to access your parts database. Right. But within a company, obviously it's, it's, it's mandatory. Many people need to access the database at the same time. And another reason is that I, I really want to support all the major platforms. I don't want an app that is, for example, Windows only.

Jan Rychter: Oh, right. Yep.

Dave Jones: When I look at my user base, it's, there is a split between Linux, Macs and Windows. And they're obviously the mobile platforms. And I want to support all of them. And this is just not doable, at least for me as a, as a, as a, as a solo, as a solo software maker as well. Yeah, exactly. We haven't mentioned that this is a, this is a self-funded business and I am the founder and I am the only person developing the software and doing everything. So.

Jan Rychter: I don't know. You should get some VCs in there. I'm sure that, I'm sure that they would want to, you know, really give you lots of great suggestions. Oh yeah.

Dave Jones: They will improve things. Definitely. See, this is a discussion I have sometimes with, with, with people when they tell me, well, but you're a single person company. What, what will happen to the software in a year or two or, or, or something? And I tell them, well, if you're dealing with a VC funded company, there is no outcome that is good for you as a customer. That's right. None of them. If the company IPOs, which will likely not happen. That's right. Then they will go on to surge growth and revenues. This is not good for you. If they get acquired, they will probably get shut down or merged into something. Not good for you.

Jan Rychter: Oracle bought them. And now guess what? You have to buy Oracle.

Speaker ?: Exactly.

Jan Rychter: Good luck. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Or they can run out of money, which is again, not good for you. So there is no outcome, which is good for the customer. That's right. Yeah. So, so this is a self-funded sustainable business and I'm in this for the longterm and decisions are made, well, differently. Yeah.

Jan Rychter: Yeah. So what actually we, well, we haven't covered, usually we do this a little earlier, but what is your background in that you're capable of both electronics and software?

Dave Jones: Yeah. My background is actually mostly on the software side. Electronics was a hobby for me for many, many years, actually since childhood. I've spent much of my life as a software developer or I managed software teams and I founded companies. So I'm an entrepreneur, you might say. But eventually I realized that I'm, I'm kind of tired of this whole entrepreneur thing, especially VCs and bosses and enterprises and all that.

Jan Rychter: I don't understand why.

Chris Gammell: Well, yeah, you would never get it. So invigorating. Yeah. Right.

Dave Jones: So, so I figured that, yeah, at a certain age, I would really like to be independent and do what I love. And, uh, I found something which is on the intersection of, uh, actually of, of, of my hobby and my other fascination, which is software. And, and I'm pretty happy with it so far. So I'm doing what I love because I write software and, and I design things. I solve problems. That's an engineering kind of approach, which, which I will enjoy. I still build electronics and I do some consulting. So I'm pretty happy with that as well. And then the nice thing about parts box is that it is a sustainable business. So, so I'm pretty happy with that. It's not something that a VC would be happy with. Okay. As you said, this is a niche business. So there will be no major exponential growth, no hockey sticks or, or whatever, but I don't care. I'm happy with how it's growing. I'm happy with my customers. And the nice thing about my customers is that they are mostly engineers. So on a daily basis, I interact with people who are smart, usually smarter than me and who are nice. And our email discussions, for example, are really on a level that is not achievable in, in other places. So I'm very, very happy about that.

Jan Rychter: You paint a nice picture there. That's, that's pretty great. I mean, well, I mean, hell hanging out with engineers all day. That's, that's, that's my goal. So yeah. Although they will tell you exactly what they want that I guess that that's really the only downside. Is if something's broken, you're, you're, well, you do know about it right away.

Dave Jones: That's actually a bit of a problem because I usually want to want, want them to tell me not what they would like to see in the software. I would much rather understand what they're trying to achieve.

Jan Rychter: Yeah, that's right.

Dave Jones: Because sometimes there might be a different solution, which, which might be even better for everyone. And the major downside of running a business like that, just so that you know, is that there is always more stuff to do than you're capable of doing. So, so my backlog is huge and, and I have no way of getting through that. And that's pretty stressful. Yeah.

Jan Rychter: Yeah. I think as you grow, that would be the main thing is you just start hiring other, other software developers, you know, and, and slowly grow, grow the team. Yeah. And, and I started doing that.

Dave Jones: To just, just, just get over the hump, you know, I started doing that. But, but on the other hand, you know, this is, this is a niche application and you really need to understand electronics in order to, to do things in here. And I really don't want parts box to become a huge company. I really want to be in control. And I want to especially be in control of every part of the design process because it turned out that designing the data structures or how the software works really isn't obvious. And, and there is nothing, there's nowhere that I can copy from. So I really want to be in control and I don't, I don't think I want to grow this to, to, to a huge size. I'm pretty happy with how it is. That's great. Yeah. And like I said, copying is difficult when you're in a niche.

Jan Rychter: So that's right. That's right. Yeah. You have to, you have to innovate in each spot. Let's talk a little bit more about some of these, these interesting, interesting views in on the data too, because so like I'm looking at the reports now, and this is one that popped out to me. That might be, that I think would be very realistic now in the days of the shortages and reeling as we talked about a couple episodes ago as reeling from part shortages. So there is a, if you go to the report side on the demo, the parts box demo, there's a low stock tab. And so that basically would say, how do you, how do you trigger when something is low stock? I mean, it seems kind of arbitrary and yet it does it, does it do predictive or how does it know that something is quote unquote low?

Dave Jones: This is entirely up to you. What you typically do is you define your low stock threshold for a part. So if for any particular part, there is an option to define the low stock level and you basically input the quantity. And if the quantity falls below the threshold, it becomes a part of the low stock report automatically. So two interesting things about that for, first of all, you obviously, you can set the thresholds in bulk. So you can select a hundred parts or all of your parts and say, I want a threshold of 100 for all of these. So it's very easy to set. The interesting thing about the low stock report is that like everything in parts box, it's updated in real time. And it's not everybody realizes that. So if somebody takes off stock somewhere within your company and you have the low stock report open, you will see something appear.

Jan Rychter: Oh, really?

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. And I know of customers who have placed this on a large, large TV in the room, basically. So they have this table open.

Jan Rychter: It's like a dashboard. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. And they can see immediately because it gets updated all the time and nobody has to reload or do anything to it. It's just there. What I'm planning in the near future are actually notifications so that you can get notified when you're below a certain level of stock report. And what's even more interesting in the future is for you to get notified when the amount of stock in the supply chain among the distributors falls below a certain threshold. And that's something that I would really like to do.

Jan Rychter: Yeah. Yeah. That's great. Because, I mean, it might end up causing more panic buying. But yeah, that's true. It's like the alarm bells go off like the stock market crashing or something. But yeah, I mean, it's tough to predict all these things, right? Because one person can come in and swoop up all the parts and just like there's nothing you can do about it, right? There is no predictive side of things when someone's got a big build and that stock you thought was out there is gone.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Swoop up is the right word.

Jan Rychter: Yeah. And having some kind of knowledge, though, of your critical components and what might be a risk in the near future is actually really quite useful.

Dave Jones: Yeah. So there are plans to expand this. And I hear it from manufacturers who build something over the longer term that they would like to keep track of what's in the supply chain. Although these days it's mostly panic all over the place, like you mentioned. And somebody swoops up all the available stock and that's it.

Jan Rychter: It's gone. It's endemic. It's bad times. Do you see more people coming in now and wanting this kind of data management because they do want to kind of have more control locally?

Dave Jones: Not really. So the growth for PartsBox is pretty much constant. I do no marketing whatsoever. I did some marketing and most of it was money not very well spent. Perhaps I'm just not good at it. So the growth is really generic. It's people finding the app and then trying it out. And if they like it, they sign up for a subscription. And I don't really... I'm sure at least like 20% is Alvaro, too. I mean, I got to be honest. Could very well be. Yeah. And every mention in social media does help. By the way, these days it's the largest problem. Becoming visible so that people even learn that you exist. And that's very difficult to do because people are tired of all the ads and mailings and so on. So especially in this case, it's a niche application. And I have to reach people who are really busy doing stuff. Okay? So... That's right.

Jan Rychter: Yeah, that's a good point.

Dave Jones: This is a difficult task. Most of my customers, they have zero time for like, you know, reading forums. They basically, they are down in their factories building stuff and designing stuff. Making a living. So, yeah. So that's a major problem. So my growth has been fairly constant. I haven't seen an uptick. What I do see right now are more questions about meta parts, for example, which are a very useful tool in terms of shortages. And about some of the purchasing functionality. So one actually kind of amusing example. PartsBox has this functionality for placing orders. And you can keep track of when you placed an order. And then you can receive against that order. That's how it's called. So you know that you received a bunch of parts. And they correspond to that order with Mouser or whoever.

Jan Rychter: Oh, okay. I was actually just on this tab. So it's like, so you have like PO44321 from DigiKey just came in. Yeah, yeah. So the idea would be like you go and when you get that box in, you say, hey, I've got it now.

Dave Jones: So there is one order which has the status ordered. And what you can do is if you go into ordering, you can receive the parts. Now, the problem that started happening is that distributors would ship you. Well, they used to ship your order in several shipments. So you would get three parts in that one and five parts in the other one. And that was still okay. But these days, you order 500 of a part and they will only ship you 100. So you need to adjust the quantity. Well, yeah. That happens more often than you'd like to hear. You will order 500 and then you will receive 100. Because, well, that's life. That's what we've got right now. That's what they had, huh? Sorry. Yeah, right. This is it. And the rest, well, maybe later. Maybe never. Yeah. So suddenly the stuff that my customers receive does not match with their orders. And it's certainly something that I should have expected. But I just never expected it at this scale. So I will need to adjust parts books to the new reality that you might not know when the rest is coming in. Or there might be a new ETA and you need to split the order into two orders. And this is also that you know so that you can actually plan ahead and so that you know how many parts you have ordered, how many parts will eventually come to you at a certain date. Yeah. So that's the new reality. But in terms of growth, no, I don't think it has influenced things that much. It's just the functionality needed. It's slightly different.

Jan Rychter: Got it. Yeah. So yeah. So like certain areas of parts box are more critical than others right now. Okay. Where would you say, I mean, so people that are listening, where should they start?

Dave Jones: Well, it really depends on how you build electronics and what you do. If you're a hubbist, I would suggest, well, first of all, stop tracking your parts in a spreadsheet. If you're doing that today, please stop. Find one of the apps. Parts box is not the only one. There are many other solutions. Some of them are open source ones. Parts box, I even acquired one of the open source databases when the owner was no longer interested in developing it. And yeah, it was called ecdb.net. And he asked me whether I'm interested. Well, yeah, I wasn't interested in the code. So the code is open source. It's available online. If somebody wants to pick it up and go with it, please enjoy. I was most interested in the user base so that I can email them and tell them that something else exists. But there are several solutions out there. And whichever one you pick, I would really suggest sticking to something rather than a spreadsheet because it really makes your life much better. If you decide to use parts box, if you're a hubbist, there is a free plan for you. Please don't worry. Please don't try to pay me money. It really makes no sense. And also some people have asked me, why don't I set up a low cost plan for hubbists that would be like, I don't know, two bucks to five bucks a month. And the short answer is that it actually doesn't make business sense. Okay. It might make sense if you were a VC funded company and you wanted to show growth and some numbers and some revenue. Right, right, right. But if you're like a single person operation, the support costs would eat me alive. And also I'm based, the company is based in the European Union, which makes selling to individuals very difficult. Okay. So there are VAT rules and taxation, tax reports and so on. This becomes really complicated when you sell to individuals within the EU. So I really cannot offer paid plans to individuals. And I decided that I want to keep parts books for free for hubbists and makers and only take money from companies. So I would suggest just sign up for the free plan, try it out, try the demo, see if it works for you. If it does, great. I would be very happy to have you and have you use the software. Now, if you're a business, then the situation is slightly different because there is really, at this point, there's really very few competitors in this field. There are some programs which implement part of what parts box does, but not all of it. There's some overlap, but there's nothing directly equivalent. But again, I would suggest just trying it out and see if it's good for you. The trials are free right now. Not even a credit card is required. So you can test everything and see if it works for you. But the big thing then is that deciding whether you actually want to track your inventory or not. And that's a decision that everybody needs to make for themselves.

Jan Rychter: Right. It's basically buying in the lifestyle at that point, right?

Dave Jones: Yeah, pretty much. Are we ready to do this and take this on? Pretty much. Because once you decide to do that, I'm trying to make it as low friction as possible. But there is always some friction. And you do need to keep the software up to date. If you don't enter information, the software will be out of date.

Jan Rychter: You're going to have a bad time. Yeah. So looking at the different levels too. So there's lab, production company, and then medical. Kind of stepping up, it looks like going from lab to production. Oh, you get multi-stage build, advanced build system. Going up to company, you get lot control and role-based access. So what's role-based access? That's basically like having like a production person versus an admin versus an engineer kind of thing?

Dave Jones: These plans, they're supposed to correspond to types of customers, really. So the idea here is that if you run a company, you should immediately see which one is good for you and stick with that. And I hope I get it right. But if not, you can always email and ask. So the company plan, let's start with one of the larger ones. The role-based access control is where you can define roles. For example, the guy that's going to do the receiving of your orders, he's only supposed to add stock, for example, and not perform builds. Or there might be another person that only does the building, but doesn't actually deal with purchasing. And you can define specific permissions for specific roles within your company and then manage a team of, let's say, 10 to 20 people. So that's when it's very useful. This is also mandatory for the medical guys, pretty much, because they have to do it. Right, right.

Jan Rychter: Which is the top level, but also they have, yeah. That's the reason medical stuff's so expensive, is they got a lot of restrictions. Exactly. A lot of things they got to do.

Dave Jones: Yeah, they need, for example, immutable audit trail of every operation that was ever performed. That's crazy. And compliance with certain roles. Yeah. But they know about this stuff, so they know why they need the product.

Jan Rychter: If they don't, they will soon enough.

Dave Jones: If they don't, if you're running a medical startup, if you're starting a medical startup, especially in the US or in Europe, you really need to look into the regulatory stuff because you need this. And trust me, all the other software that you might want to use will be more complex and more problematic. And you can also do paper, but there's going to be a lot of paper. Okay. That's right.

Jan Rychter: Yeah. So the last one is lot control. That one's really interesting to me because that's something that did not exist when I was at Keith Lee. It did not exist there. So I would go out to the production floor and I'd be like, well, do you know when you switch from one reel to the next on your, on this pick and place, you know, because we started seeing this problem. Can we tell if, you know, half the first half of this build had, you know, the one set of capacitors and the next set had another set of capacitors because we're seeing some problem with all of them and they'd be like, nah, sorry, we just, we just kind of put them in there. Is that something that actually would be possible to see on here? You'd be able to see like you switched between capacitors because you ran out?

Dave Jones: Yeah. So, so lot control is, it's a really, really important feature. A lot is a batch of parts basically. So without lot control parts box, when it has an MPN, it will consider every item of that MPN be the same. So you might have 5,000 on a reel and then 1,000 on another reel. And they are all the same. They are interchangeable. They're fungible in modern terms. Okay. So, so with lot control, the moment you add stock, you create a lot. So every time you add some stock, it usually comes from an order or, or from, I don't know, move from another warehouse. That specific batch or lot of parts is tracked independently from every other batch. So for a given MPN, you will usually have several lots. You will have a lot of 5,000 on that reel and a lot of 1,000 on another reel. Every lot has an ID. So you can ID them easily. You can also print labels for them. You can scan the barcodes. I mean, there is, there's a whole mechanism for dealing with that. But importantly, when you start building, you pick which lots you will use for that specific build. So you know which lots went into which build. And this lets you track all this, hopefully with as little, as little pain as possible. Okay. So this is something that existed in many software packages before, but I always felt when I saw how it's implemented, it was always terrible. And in parts box, it's pretty much painless. I mean, you just start using it and most of the work is being done for you. It's just that you see that instead of having 6,000 of, of a certain part, you have a lot of 5,000 and you have a lot of 1,000. That's the only major difference. Yeah.

Jan Rychter: I mean, I would imagine the best case scenario for me would be I'm troubleshooting two boards on the bench. They both have a sticker on them because they get a printed sticker that says, you know, they were, here's the build number, whatever. I scan one, I scan the other, I do a diff and it says, Hey, guess what? That capacity, you know, C304 is different. It's like, Oh wow. You know, that would be like, that's like the Holy grail for me. And especially the ease of just the scan and the diff, right? That's what I really want to know in the first place.

Dave Jones: Yeah. And yeah. And, and I, you could actually go further. Oh yeah. I've been talking to, to, to, to our mutual friend, Mihir Shah from, from inspector. And we're trying to get an integration in place so that you can actually look at your board with an iPad or your phone and it could recognize the serial number on the board and then pull up the exact parts and the exact lots for, for what is used on this specific board. Yeah. Which is phenomenal. Right. Yeah.

Jan Rychter: People don't know. So inspector is the, that's the augmented reality. Basically you scan a board and then it does like an overlay and they just got bought by mentor. What did they get bought? Cadence? I don't remember. I think it's big, big co. They got bought by big co. I know that. I thought it was maybe Cadence. But yeah. And so they're, they're doing that kind of like cool overlay stuff. Yeah.

Dave Jones: If you haven't tried inspector, please try it. It's an amazing piece of software. And I think integrating it with, with other software packages is what will bring real interesting value. Yeah. Yeah. That's cool. Okay. So let's go through the simple plans now. So, so the lab workshop is basically if you're a small institution and you have a lab and or a workshop and you build electronics, this is the plan for you. And the features really should be enough for most of what you do. The difference as you go up into production is that you get automated part attrition calculation. So wastage. You can say that for certain parts, when I use this resistor, the minimum is, let's say 10 or 20, the leader strip. And there is a wastage of 2% or 20 parts, whichever is larger. Okay. So you set that for your parts. And then when you plan your purchasing or when you're doing your builds, parts books will adjust the quantities for you, which is very convenient.

Jan Rychter: So like every build gets a 2% on top you're saying? Yeah. Is that the idea?

Dave Jones: Yeah. And if you can recover some of those parts, that's great. You can add them to your stock again later, but it basically assumes that you've used up more than you planned.

Jan Rychter: So how does it then work for if something that's like going onto it? So like you only have that attrition at the beginning of putting it onto a pick and place machine. So then does it only do that that first time when it knows like that you're putting on a pick and place and it's just that first time?

Dave Jones: No, unfortunately it doesn't. It does that for every build. So depending on your workflow, you need to set the numbers right. So there are two numbers. Like I said, there's an absolute number and their percentage. And if you're more comfortable with a general percentage, for example, you can use that. Got it. There are many ways to approach attrition and I plan to think about it in the future. But then see, the way you design this is you talk to your customers and you ask them how they actually use it and then you discuss. Whoa, that's a radical idea there. See, and the problem that I found is that there is no one I can really copy from. By the way, I've already seen copycats. I've already seen people copying from me, which is kind of nice in a way, I guess.

Jan Rychter: Yeah, yeah. It's another lab of, you know, you get to push and pull and then you can copy back from that if you want to.

Dave Jones: Yeah, it gets really funny when you see somebody else's feature list and you see a name for a feature and you know that this is a name that you've invented badly. It's a bad name, actually. But, but, but.

Jan Rychter: That's right.

Dave Jones: Okay, anyway, so, so part attrition and then multi-stage builds are what's, what's in the production plan. So when you really want to track several stages of your build and the advanced build system, it's, it's a group, it's a really bad name, but, but it's, it's a name for a group of features, which lets you select which specific parts you will use for every line in your bomb. And this is important if you have a lot of meta parts or if your parts are in many locations, then you want to decide in what order you will want to consume those parts. Hmm.

Jan Rychter: What about like, like actual like roll up type stuff? So I've had it where, okay, I'm going to use my Kiefly experience, but like I was making a plugin board. So it was basically like a sub-assembly, but then the sub-assembly had like castellated edges that I needed to then solder in. So that would be a custom part, but the custom part also is assembled. Is that something that could be tracked?

Dave Jones: How would that work? Yeah. So this is, this is somewhat handled right now, but not as well as I'd like. And there is a lot that can be improved there. PartsBox has a concept of sub-assembly ports. And what that is, is when you build a bomb, a project, you can tell PartsBox that you also want to track the result of that build. So when you build something, you add stock to the corresponding sub-assembly port. So some of your projects will have a kind of a corresponding sub-assembly port, which gets created automatically and it's tracked in tandem with the project. And when you perform a build, you end up adding stock. You've built 100 and the part gets plus 100 stock and you know that it's in stock and you decide in which location it goes. And this lets you use that sub-assembly in other assemblies further on, in other bombs. So in a way you do get that capability of, of building more complex devices. And that's how people use it today. Now the problem with that is that currently PartsBox has no concept of a hierarchy or, or, or a combined bomb.

Jan Rychter: Yeah. Like a roll-up type of multi-level bomb type of thing. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. And the main reason for that is that I, I still haven't understood all the implications precisely. This needs to be really well designed in order to be useful. And it's also a lot of work to get right. So you kind of need to manage those independently, which is a bit annoying if you have a lot of those sub-assemblies and, and really complex devices, but the basic functionality is there. So, so you can at least track things on a certain level.

Jan Rychter: Yeah. I mean, at a certain point, I guess, so, so you actually, you'd have a page for this, which we'll link in the sub-assembly parts and you, as an example, you have an LED desk lamp and you say there's a control PCB, an LED PCB and an enclosure, and you have different versions as well. And actually that's another thing that would, you would eventually have to track when you're doing, this is another thing that like an MRP does, right? Where basically you're saying, oh, I'm using board 1.7, you know, version 1.7 and it integrates here and here. And there should also be some kind of highlighting if, you know, say the cable, the cable harness changed and, you know, no longer is compatible, that sort of thing. That is, I think there's tools like, like, isn't tulips sort of like that? I mean, there's other like sassy type tools that do this sort of thing, but again, this is outside the, you know, anything I'm usually doing because it's usually, I'm usually just doing the PCB. So is the thought that eventually this will play towards that or is it more like this will then feed into another system that does more higher level assemblies?

Dave Jones: I have at least 20 or 30 pages of notes on project versioning. Oh, okay. Oh, interesting. There's plenty of work that has gone into that already and there is nothing which is visible to the users, unfortunately, because this is an immensely complex subject. How you handle project provisions, whether you can diff two projects and what exactly is a project revision? I mean, what data is common between revisions and what data is supposed to change? And then how you actually deal with them, how you specify them, how you keep track of those sub assemblies, which are the result of building a certain revision and so on. And then what really complicates this is the medical guys, they have strict process requirements on top of that. So they need certain revisions to be approved for building or they need them to be removed so that you cannot build them and so on. There are strict rules. So all in all, there was a lot of design work, which has already been done and PartsBox will definitely have that functionality, but it hasn't been done yet. And that's also one other design decision, I guess, here in PartsBox is that my approach has usually been, if I can ship something that's reasonably simple and works for a number of people, I will ship it. Yeah. Okay. So rather than go and sit there for one year designing something extremely complex, which I don't know if people would use. So projects right now, the way people version projects, they just put the version in the name of the project. And if they have another version, they just create another project. Is it optimal? Well, certainly not because you end up with lots of projects, but then they're fairly easy to search and filter. So it's not a huge disadvantage and it lets you at least use the software today.

Jan Rychter: Yeah. It's a little less clicking actually too, I think, because you're, yeah, you have a longer list that you might need to search through. It's kind of like a flat, flat database kind of idea instead of like a nested database or something like that.

Dave Jones: Yes. Yes. Although I'm not saying it's the best solution ever. I really would like to have something much better and something better will come, but I really want it to be good in general. I don't want to deploy something that, that, that isn't that I don't consider good. Yeah. I wouldn't use myself.

Jan Rychter: Yeah. Yeah. I, the other thing that just popped into my head is this is not just MRP. This is actually PLM. So product lifecycle maintenance, like arena or other tools that are out there. Right. And basically I was just thinking about, as you were talking about the, the different revs of things, I was thinking about writing, writing change notices because it's not now a stock issue, right? Hopefully if it's a manufacturing and I have version 1.1 and it has, you know, all these different components in it. I want it always to be using the approved parts that are on the vendor list or that are in the meta part individual listing. But then if I'm going from 1.1 to 1.2, because I've, I've fixed the bug in hardware, right? I, I've got rid of that jumper wire and actually redid the PCB, or I have a bodge that, you know, the, someone on the floor needs to do, that's actually an entirely different assembly, right? Not entirely different, but it is a modified assembly that might have its own set of meta parts, you know, so say I bodge in a new resistor and probably bodging in a meta resistor or meta component. And so, yeah, tracking, tracking that change is its own, like the change itself is a, is a deliberate action, but then the build should always be the same for that change. So yeah, I have to like track all these multiple levels over and over again. It, it's pretty intense.

Dave Jones: Yeah. And it gets more intense because as you mentioned, the concept of a change, the meaning of, of, of a change in your, in your project is really context dependent and depends on the company and, and the rules and, and the industry and so on. Some changes might be significant in some industries and then some other, it doesn't really matter. Right. And the other interesting thing, which, which, which you've touched on, we talked about meta parts, which group together several equivalent substitutes. Well, the problem I've already encountered is that this equivalence might not hold for all of your projects. So you have your capacitor, your meta part, and two substitutes might be equivalent in one context. And then in the context of another project, the strict requirements, they might not be okay. So I'm, I'm thinking right now.

Jan Rychter: So like you're saying, like if there's a temperature coefficient on one, it's like a hundred PPM for resistor. For example. And that's fine for project A, but project B, you say, you can't substitute something more, even, even something tighter tolerance. You're not allowed to do that or something like that.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Or because of durability or because of your sourcing requirements that you're supposed to buy stuff only from a certain country and not from a different country. For example, there might be many reasons. So, so, so, and this might be per project, might be dependent on a particular project. So something I need to think about, for example, and that in the context of, of change tracking revisions, I need to think about per project part equivalence. So you, you should be able to specify that these two substitutes are okay equivalent, but only in the context of this specific project or this specific revision. And it gets crazy pretty fast. So, yeah.

Jan Rychter: Yeah. Is there, so is that, that's a TBD thing. That's still a TBD item or is that, there's some way to do that now?

Dave Jones: No, there's no way to do that right now. It's, it's TBD, but it's pretty high up the feature list because with the part shortages, people started asking about this quite a bit.

Jan Rychter: And I mean, in theory, you could, you could go in back populate and have like a, so if you have 0603-1UF-whatever, whatever, you could have a dash one, dash two, dash three at the end and make your own meta part for more tightly specified. But that then is kind of defeats the purpose of the meta part in the first place.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Then it's not as convenient and you really want to do this on a per project basis. You want to be able to say, well, for this project or, or for this specific build, even I want to be able to use this part as well. And then some customers will want to track this as a change and some will, will not care. So yeah, this gets complex real quick, real fast. So a lot of my time is being spent with, with, with a drawing application where I draw diagrams and, and, and basically try to think up how things will work, which I enjoy immensely, but it takes time.

Jan Rychter: Yeah. Okay. Okay. So one last question on, on the assembly side of the thing, just thinking about meta parts again, cause this is a very important topic or a CPN or a meta part or however it's called, basically your own part number for a part that you don't care about. Basically it's naming a jelly bean and saying the jelly bean, you don't care. So I might be doing this in my lab. I'm building using the parts I have on hand. I have the meta parts listed. I have the, the three capacitors that are approved for that sort of thing. If I then say, I want to go to an assembly house, right? Do I go and export? Do I always just go and order the parts myself? Or do I just send them my bomb and say anything with a meta part number have, you know, here's an AVL, here's my part list. How do you actually, how do you actually interface with a third party who might be doing a build for you and, and tell them here are the approved parts, just go for it. Or do you always just have to order the parts yourself and take that on?

Dave Jones: No, many people, many people work with CMs and it's a very common use case, obviously. So there, there are several ways to, to, to, to, to approach this. What most people do is they export the bomb with the meta part names. So they will have things like 06031microx7r because usually what they do, if, if, if, the, the vendor is supposed to the, if your CM EMS is supposed to buy the parts, you want the general specification rather than the specific MPN in most cases. So, so this is enough for them. What people also do is that you can add additional columns to their table, and then you can list the exact alternates or substitutes that you have, that you have, or you can do, there is what is called the meta part report, which lists, it's kind of a Swiss army knife solution to, to most meta part issues. It lists all your meta parts and all their substitutes in a table, and you can sort by either the MPN or the meta part name. So you can group them together and export this as a, basically a list of approved substitutes for your CM.

Jan Rychter: So, okay. So that would work. So basically you send a secondary document, it's a secondary spreadsheet, then they can go to look up themselves.

Dave Jones: Right. Although I think this is not ideal and, and I think there is a feature in the queue somewhere so that you can export a bomb with directly with a list of approved substitutes, you know, in every bomb line so that it's more clear and it gets exported in a single table.

Jan Rychter: Okay. So then you'd have like a, so if we're going across a bomb, right. I'm visualizing my head here. I've seen bombs like this before where actually the BeagleBone bomb is like this actually, where they have, so line item 537 is a capacitor and it says, so line 537, it's, it's, it's item 537. And then it's a one microfarad capacitor directly below it. It's also 537. And then it's a different part number for the capacitors. That's sort of the idea that you're thinking there.

Dave Jones: Well, you could do that, but I was thinking more of a grouping within a single line. So it would have a single line per part and it would say it's a one microfarad capacitor. And then you would get a column or three more columns with MPNs for the substitutes that are accepted. Oh, I got it.

Jan Rychter: Okay. So yeah. And KiCad kind of has that. Well, I do that in KiCad where I do MPN1, MPN2, MPN3, where I will actually maintain that locally as needed if I have. So like a good example for that was like a part where it might be available on LCSC for like super cheap, but also I want to make sure that there's like a backup at DigiKey or Mouser and their equivalent. But I say either one's fine, but they're both in there. So I have the data for both.

Dave Jones: Yeah. So maintaining this information in your CAD is usually painful. Yes. Especially if it's an inexpensive CAD. So I would recommend not doing that. That's why I think the approach with meta parts and giving generic names to your generic components is somewhat better. Yeah. But we haven't, I think we forgot to mention one important aspect here. When you create, okay. So in order to do anything with a part in parts box, you first have to create the part because parts box, it will let you create a part with no stock. Basically, this is part, a part that you might be interested in. You might use it in your bombs or wherever. And when you create a part, it gives you a choice of basically three choices. If you go into parts create, you can actually, actually see those choices.

Jan Rychter: Yeah. I'm going to do this right now.

Dave Jones: Yeah. So there are, there are three choices. The first one is linked part and linked is something, it's a word I invented and I don't think it's very good, but I really couldn't come up, come up with anything better. So it's basically anything which has an NPM. If you have an NPM, it'll create a part for you, which will be linked to an online identity. So in other words, parts box says, okay, I know what that part is. It corresponds to this online thing that you can buy from these distributors. Right.

Jan Rychter: Got it. Oh, so it's basically a meta part, but using their name and kind of borrowing.

Dave Jones: Well, it's not a meta part because it only corresponds to strictly one part. Okay. The idea is here that this really is that part. A meta part is a grouping. Okay.

Jan Rychter: So can we, let's use an actual example here. So I'll use the same one I said before, TPS 61161 DRV. Right. So this is a driver chip, I believe. Yeah. It looks like a LED driver. It's in the project demo.

Dave Jones: Yeah. So if you enter an NPM in the box below and click on match, it'll force you to choose one specific part that you think you want. Okay. And this is the one that you're dealing with.

Jan Rychter: Okay.

Dave Jones: Okay. And this is why I talked about part identity. So we don't have a good concept of part identity right now. So the way I solve this is I work with Octopart and I basically use their concept of what a part is. So an Octopart ID is what I consider to be a specific part. And you wouldn't believe the amount of trouble that this gets me. People are not aware of this, but companies split, companies merge, companies get acquired. And with parts, what very often happens is that you will have two different parts in the supply chain, which are actually the same part. So there are part merges, which happen in Octopart. I need to track all that. It really gets pretty crazy. But ideally...

Jan Rychter: So for this specific example that we're using here too, at the end of the DRV, there's an R, there's a T. Yeah. There's a TGV or TG4 rather. There's a RV, RG4, or sorry, there's a RG4. And then there's just a blank, which is probably just generic.

Dave Jones: And so... You really need to choose which one.

Jan Rychter: These are all the same part though. It's crazy.

Dave Jones: It's just tape and reel versus tube maybe. But if you look at the supply chain at the distributors, you will be able to buy each one separately, usually as a separate SKU. So nobody knows if they're the same or different. Oh, this industry is wonderful. And you know, we're... Yeah. And we're bringing this upon ourselves. I have no idea why this industry is not adopting GS1. That way, every manufacturer would apply for a prefix and then number their chips. And basically every chip would have a GS1 number, a G10, which is also a barcode. And the manufacturer would decide what is an orderable part. And that's it.

Jan Rychter: Yeah. I mean, it's probably because they're all big and old and stupid.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Another reason is that it's not as simple as I described. There is obviously much more to it. So it would require some careful thinking. But...

Jan Rychter: And the resistor companies are probably like, do you know how many parts we have?

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's not easy. But we should at least start doing something towards solving this.

Jan Rychter: Well, how do we start like a... I don't know, like an online petition or something, you know?

Dave Jones: Like that would be... I really have no idea. I thought you with your influence, you know? I really don't. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Jan Rychter: Chris shouting about how much parts suck and having no answer. At least now there might be an answer. Get Dave to... I'll have to look into GS1. Or get Dave to produce a rant. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Dave would, you know... It'll help. Yeah. He would add fuel to fire. You might want to actually direct that fire somewhere, though. Yeah. So, anyway...

Dave Jones: We'll make a landing page or something. And then we'll move forward with that. No, but it's definitely something to think about. We should push the industry towards adopting some concept of part identity so that we know if two parts are the same or not. But in any case, PartsBox is trying to do whatever it can in this imperfect world. So, when you enter an MPN and you select one of the options there, what you automatically get in your personal database, you get some specs for the part. You get a link to the data sheet. And it shows up. There is a little part image also, which you see, which is kind of nice. So, it brings in some data for you. You don't need to fill that out yourself. Yeah. And those are linked parts. And the nice thing about those is when you get to actual purchasing, PartsBox knows how to buy those. So, through Octopart, I know that this part corresponds to certain SKUs at Mouser or other distributors. Now, the local part is something which has no official MPN. It could be anything. It could be something that you've produced. It could be a plastic enclosure. It could be hardware that you've indexed yourself. Oh, sorry.

Jan Rychter: Oh, so this is now different than a linked part, you're saying. Sorry. Yes.

Dave Jones: Yeah. So, the local part is different from the linked part in that it could be anything.

Jan Rychter: Yeah. So, this might be a circuit board too, right? I mean, like that might be.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. That's how people usually track security. So, when you order 10 PCBs or 100 PCBs from somewhere, you add them as local parts. And you can still use them. They can still have a price. And you can do many things with those. And then metaparts are, well, we talked about metaparts. It's a generic part which contains other parts. But the reason why I wanted to go here is that I wanted to explain the concept of linked parts, which is kind of important. That when you create something in parts box, it brings in a lot of data and links that to an online identity. At least it tries to as much as it can. Yeah. So, it will track some stuff for you.

Jan Rychter: So, then metaparts, do you have, it doesn't actually recommend, there's no like, I could do any thing I wanted, right? I could call it jabberwocky 1234 for a capacitor, right? It doesn't matter what it is. It's up to you. Do you have a recommended system though? I mean, like, do you put a stake in the ground and say, this is the best way to do it?

Dave Jones: No, because I've talked to many customers and every one of them has a different system of their own. Oh, sure. They're all pretty good, actually.

Jan Rychter: I think it's actually, I'm sure they're good, but here's what I'm saying. When people don't want to have one, I think starting to standardize on these type of things actually could be really beneficial. We should talk about this offline later, either. Because I think that because there's no standard anyways, people are going to keep making up more and more branching into infinite standards. But why not just say there is one? You know what I mean? Like, I don't know.

Dave Jones: Yeah. And I think the one that I'm suggesting kind of is in the demo, if you look at the metaparts.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: There is the package size for capacitors. Package size, capacity, dielectric, and breakdown voltage. So those are the key parameters that you want. And for resistors, it will be slightly different. But for example, for resistors, some people will care about the voltage and some people will not.

Jan Rychter: Ah, yeah. True.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Do you tell them to specify it perhaps? Well, most people actually don't really care about the voltage. So it's not as clear-cut as it seems. But I'm all for defining reasonable defaults. It's definitely something that I'd like to do.

Jan Rychter: Yeah. Okay. Cool. That's great. Well, Jan, this is a great tool. I think you've given a really good insight into why people want to use it. And especially, yeah, there's cost here. I mean, I think that personally, as I encounter more software, I actually look for paid versions. And I know this is not the case for everyone. I've been on Hackaday Commons before. Uh, and, uh, you know, like, but I think that, so like 50 bucks a month is the bottom tier of this stuff. But when you really think about the cost, it's all about like the cost of messing stuff up. And I, when I think about that, my mistakes cost more than $50 a month when I make them. And so like, that's when I, I start to, you know, that's usually what I point to. And I think that this has some real value and people should definitely check it out. And if they're, they don't see the value in the higher end features, you know, the hobbyist stuff is a really good fit too. It seems like, so yeah, I appreciate you explaining all this stuff.

Dave Jones: The way the pricing is designed, it's, it should really make sense for your business. Okay. For, for a business that produces electronics, 50 bucks a month should not be an, uh, a huge amount of money. And, and like, like you said, if it saves a couple of mistakes, saves a couple of hours, you've already saved money. And then for people who do not do this for a living, that's why there is a free version. And I really try to, to cram as much features as I can into the free version without hurting the business. The goal here is long-term sustainability. Uh, like I said, it's supposed to be a business that, that is there in five years and how, hopefully it will be. Yeah. Yeah. So, so I've, I've, I've, I've, I've enjoyed telling you about all this. I hope we haven't boarded all listeners to death.

Jan Rychter: Oh, I think it's great. Like I said, I think given, given the, uh, the state of the world right now, I'm sure people are sitting on the edge of their chair thinking about how can I fix this? Yeah. It could be. Yeah. Where can people find you online if they want to chat more about parts or talk to you about parts box?

Dave Jones: Yeah. Well, so basically partsbox.com is the, the official website and you could go there and whether you go there or my personal website doesn't really matter. It's a one person company. So if you send an email to support partsbox.com, it'll reach me. So that's right.

Jan Rychter: Okay.

Dave Jones: It's not a problem. I'm also on Twitter. You can see parts box, parts box IO on Twitter actually, because it, uh, it used to be .io. Great.

Jan Rychter: All right. Well, thanks so much, Jan. I really appreciate you telling us about this stuff and hopefully we'll, we'll see more, more stuff about meta parts and people using this to great effect in the future.

Dave Jones: Thank you for having me. It was a pleasure.

Speaker ?: Thank you.