I’d like to share with you something I’ve been developing for quite a while now.
It’s called BOMER, a Parts Inventory and BOM Management software for electronics.
It is more than a simple parts management tool. It allows you to manage Projects (BOMs) and Orders and get real-time pricing information. This feature alone is extremely useful to get an idea what the total/unit cost for a 10,100,1000 units run would be and, for that same reason, to quickly quote projects (in case you, like me, create hardware for a living and need to send quotations often).
It will have a paid version but it will also have a FREE one, forever. It’s now in BETA, full featured and with extended limits.
If you, like me, struggle on keeping your inventory and projects organized, give it a try! Let me know what you think and how you’d like to see it improved.
Looks nice from the screenshots although I can’t try it out for now since it looks like there is only a Linux version.
The 5 projects limit is probably a deal-breaker for me without knowing how much the pro version might cost, I’m not professional but I have more than 5 projects on the go already.
It’s actually Windows-only (for now). Maybe you though it was Linux-only because it’s a “.tar.gz” file? I should change that to a zip soon. Meannwhile you can decompress it on Windows using 7Zip (it’s free and a great tool).
Also, I already had a Linux version available but decided to remove it since maintaining both versions at this stage would be quite hard. A Linux release is planned though.
The limits are not fixed yet. How many projects would make sense for you?
Native Windows? The tarball I downloaded was full of .so files and file bomer responded with bomer: ELF 64-bit LSB executable, x86-64, version 1 (GNU/Linux), dynamically linked (uses shared libs), for GNU/Linux 2.6.32, not stripped
Either way, I’m on OSX right now so I’m still out of luck (although I have Qt and Python 2.7 so if it were open source I’d probably be able to build it).
It would depend on how the project limit worked, if it was concurrent projects or all projects and if deleting/abandoning projects was a thing. If I were to follow all the CE projects that would be 10 right there and I’ve already created 5 of my own and I’ve only been doing this for 6 months or so. I imagine that whatever the project limit was I’d hit it eventually, so it would really be balancing how many I’d need to get a good feel for it’s usefulness before moving up to Pro and being able to assess the cost/benefit then.
I think calling the third tier ‘Pro’ is a misnomer, I can see hitting project/parts limits long before actually being a professional.
Ah yes, sorry about that. The website was trying to guess which OS you were in and sending you the unix version. Now you always get the Windows binary.
From a hobbyist standpoint, I believe Projects are more useful for “active” projects for which you need to order parts and manage its stock. BOMER will tell you if you have parts in stock or not, and create an Order for you if you don’t. And automatically remove stock when you assemble the project. Old projecs that you enventually will never get back to may be deleted I would say. If for some reason that project become “active” again, you can always import it again to BOMER.
I agree that there’s quite a significant gap between the FREE and PRO version. The PRO version is definitely intended for someone who makes a profit out of electronics but the FREE limits may be too restrictive. I’m planing to increase the FREE limits and create an intermediate plan.
It’s not easy to come up with a solution that fits everyones needs and I want it to be fair for everyone, that’s why your feedback is greatly appreciated.
edit: out of curiosity, which electronics CAD software do you use on OSX?
Yes, I can imagine getting this balance right might be tricky. If you price the PRO plan right and get a bunch of subscriptions that pay your expenses for you it will be easier to play around with the “subsidized users”
I mostly use KiCAD now, but Eagle also works fine in OSX. My primary machine is OSX only due to Apple silliness with locking in iOS app builds but I have access to Windows and Linux so I’ll definitely check BOMER out.
BTW, do you pronounce it “B-OH-MER” or “BOM-MER” (same as BOMBER in english)?
I’m all about “making love, not war” though 