We (Revel Custom Wine Cellars) have been tasked to look into this. We see many management systems with a wide range of functionality. We see ideas like “smart racks”, and wine systems with sensors to track additions and subtractions from the cellar. We see many different “diagrammatic” approaches with a wide range of database interfaces. We see label recognition, bar code scans, etc. Nothing so far that says here is your inventory, and this bottle is located in this room on this shelf, third row back, etc., that works with a user friendly interface. To that end we have developed a working framework. We have a clear idea of what our restaurant and major collector clients are looking for and we know there are many people working on this and don’t want to reinvent the wheel. Looking for collaborators. Have development resources ($) to bring something of value forward. Suggestions and introductions appreciated – confidential exchanges welcome.
Ping Eric at Cellartracker
What is wrong with the “Bin” field in Cellartracker? Come up with whatever scheme that says where a bottle is and place it in that field. Are you saying it is not “user friendly enough”?
Assuming you are smart about building your set-up in Cellartracker than the phone app works great for this. I can currently tell you were every single bottle is in my cellar. I only have 700 bottles, but they are all mapped easily with CT…
I have 750 slots and each slot is individually mapped. Wine sitting outside those slots are also detailed.
All easily inputted and tracked via cellartracker through the “bin” field.
Below is a picture from the iOS app
If you are looking for something more robust than the slotting function within CellarTracker!, why not just contact JDA and use SpacePlanning? This is already completely built out and quite capable of taking a dump from CellarTracker>>Excel>>JDA and almost instantly rendering an interactive 3D cellar.
If there truly exists a customer base to make this commercially viable (I tend to doubt it), there is no need to reinvent the wheel.
CT will have this functionality. Eric has been working on it or so I’ve heard.
A CT user actually wrote an excel spreadsheet that does it from CT data.
I know someone that built an app for their cellar that is linked with CT. So, yes, has been done.
Can also use Vinopal to provide a better visual for wines and works with CT and bin locations.
A little bit off-topic, but I’ve at times considered rigging up a series of LEDs to light up the specific Le Cache slot that the bottle I’m looking for is in. Pick 2 Light-style. I might still do it at some point if I get bored enough to want that kind of project. (Yes, I’m a nerd…)
My cellar has double deep racking, so every designation in CT is in the form 09-16-B, which means 9th column, 16th row, back slot. The only problem is remembering to delete wine when I drink it, but since each spot can have only one bottle, when I dump the data to Excel and sort, I find errors easily so long as I remember to put every bottle in CT when I shelve it.