Idea: A cloud-like storage infrastructure for physical items

Kinda like Amazon S3 and Glacier.

• Storing stuff: You package/mail your stuff to the sorting facility, or pay a fee for people to come to your house with a truck and take your stuff. You get unique identifiers for each of your stuff once it's placed in storage.
• Retrieving stuff: API call to ship a list of items to an address.
• Tagging: 3d scans of item are stored. AI to determine tags for the item, including its make/model.
• Fully automated warehouse: Bin packing algorithms optimally store the items in least amount of space. Robots.
• Financials: Pay a fee for storage, a fee for retrieval, and also a monthly storage fee. Storage/retrieval rates can be discounted if lots of items are stored/retrieved. Deposit to be held for possible disposal, will be returned once item is retrieved.
• Delinquent accounts: AI will determine a value for the item and offer the item for sale via an API. AI will also of course take into account the demand for an item in choosing the price.
• Item investigation: For a fee, you can get a human to inspect an item and gather requested information. Information will be added to its metadata.
• Possible applications to use infrastructure:
  
  • Pawn shops that work online
  • Effortless storage/selling website: "I may want this back in the future, but if someone pays $X I'd be happy to part with it."
  • Retailers/producers don't need to run their own warehouse/shipping operations anymore.

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So, Amazon warehouse but... not amazon warehouse?

You can do this already by being an amazon store

I'd really like to have a web interface for items, except it's the things in my house. Instead of relying on shipping your stuff somewhere, you could just use ROBOTS to better utilize your own physical space. Imagine something the size of a bookshelf or drawers where you put things in and it sorts / categorizes them for you. Like a coin sorter but it's the future now

I'd really like to have a web interface for items, except it's the things in my house. Instead of relying on shipping your stuff somewhere, you could just use ROBOTS to better utilize your own physical space. Imagine something the size of a bookshelf or drawers where you put things in and it sorts / categorizes them for you. Like a coin sorter but it's the future now

there was a brief period of time when people were doing this with the apple iSight and their own books; the camera would scan UPCs (barcodes) on the back of books and items, and would help manage inventory, essentially: locations in the house, but ESPECIALLY which friends books had been loaned out to! (this is how I heard about it)

personal logistics is an underdeveloped field imo

personal logistics is an underdeveloped field imo

Non-ERP logistics software is underdeveloped.  Or well, ERP is way, WAY too complicated for home or small business use, which is getting more into the space of my interest on this topic.

I was cleaning my dozens and dozens of open browser tabs, and rediscovered that I had this topic open still, and took the time to dig around and look to see what software is around for this.


There is very little.
And most of it isn't directly related to what nicefish was originally proposing, nor toward any personal logistics solutions that could build on an API to interface with a cloud-based distributed storage system.

So, going to toss out one idea I *did* find, so that people can look, and comment, and point out features that fit, and features that don't, so we can hammer on this idea and refine it, maybe even get a plan?

What I did find that was in a similar bent is...  open source archival management software.

Access to Memory (AtoM)

https://www.accesstomemory.org/en/
https://www.accesstomemory.org/en/docs/2.4/user-manual/add-edit-content/physical-storage/

The software here is focused on Archival of objects - where they are, and record keeping about them, and what's been done to preserve them.   Overbuilt for the "hey I need to figure out what stuff I have *here*with*me*" or "Hey, let's move *item*here* from MyLocation1 to CloudStuffStorage314159 at CloudStuffProviderX".

But well, as I groused about already, there isn't much around that fits the bill.  Looking at things that are similar might give inspiration for the proper sort of software tool for the home-user-with-stuff.

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I'd really like to have a web interface for items, except it's the things in my house. Instead of relying on shipping your stuff somewhere, you could just use ROBOTS to better utilize your own physical space. Imagine something the size of a bookshelf or drawers where you put things in and it sorts / categorizes them for you. Like a coin sorter but it's the future now

i want this for a parts shelf, like for electronics where you might have 100+ tiny drawers and a bunch of other stuff, the robot just goes along the shelf and finds the item you ask for. Even simpler would just be having an LED on each storage unit that lights up when you select the item on a tablet or something.

Non-ERP logistics software is underdeveloped.  Or well, ERP is way, WAY too complicated for home or small business use, which is getting more into the space of my interest on this topic.

this was really interesting to read and i would like to discuss this more in the future, my only regret is that i'm finally getting around to this post a year late

i absolutely love this idea