I needed a way of keeping track of which DVDs I own so that I didn’t accidentally buy two copies of anything. One long weekend of programming later produced Disccat for Android based phones.
New: Now available on the Android market. Scan the barcode below, or search for DiscCat in the Market search to download.
If you do not have market access on your Android device, you can download the APK. [download id=”1″ format=”1″]
About Disccat
Disccat is a simple DVD/Blu-ray/HDDVD catalogue. You can add discs to your database by scanning them in using Barcode Reader (if you do not have this already, Disccat will offer to install it the first time you try and scan a barcode) and if upcdatabase.com has that title it will download the disc information. If upcdatabase.com does not have the disc in its catalogue, it can upload the disc info once you have typed it in for other users to download in the future.
This app is completely free, but if you do wish to contribute something you can do so via Paypal.
If you have Barcode Scanner installed you can scan the following barcode to download it to your phone directly.
Very cool! This would be amazingly helpful if i could extract the db for importing into a ‘spreadsheet’ log i started a while ago on google docs.
Any way to get the data out in some sort of text format? i looked on the sd card but didn’t find any files related to your program.
I am planning on adding an export to CSV option this coming weekend. Probably won’t be any sooner as I am in Cisco training all day this week, so a bit burned out by the time I get home 🙂
Nice work on this!! The export works great! Upgraded my rating/review to 5 star yesterday.
I have a few suggestions I wanted to offer:
Have you considered using a backup site if upcdatabase comes up empty? I am glad to contribute but I’m doing a lot of HDDVD’s and the majority are not showing up and the typing gets old quickly.
itemlookup.net seems comprehensive and has a URL lookup.
Also, adding a link to the movie on IMDB.com or the item on itemlookup.net would be awesome so when i’m looking at my list and i can’t remember what that movie was about i’m one click away!
Example: http://www.itemlookup.net/search.php?type=upc&s=025195009898
or http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0296572/ (doesn’t look like IMDB cross-references with UPC though).
Lastly, a few nit picks: on my Droid when using landscape mode mode the submit/cancel buttons are almost completely hidden, can you move the “submit to upc..” up next to “Owned” so it’s easier to get to?
Keep up the fine work, bet this is a fun project!
The problem with other websites is that they do not provide an API for accessing their information. UPCDatabase is the only one I found with a public API, so that is the one I chose to use. If there is no API, I have to interpret the HTML returned by a website, which will likely break database searches every time the website decides to change its look :/
I will investigate using a few other sources though, as a source that works now and doesn’t work later is better than not having a source at all, and I can always keep UPCDatabase as the primary source.
Now, links and landscape mode both work into my plans for the near future. I have a couple of days off work next week, and while I am not planning on spending all of my time off on it, I am intending on redoing the user interface. Grouping tasks into tabs, and adding tabs to the item display for things like cover image, links, synopsis, etc should clean it up a lot and make it a little less confusing to use. I will just move the tickbox as you suggest for now as a short term fix, expect a release in the next hour or so.
I was surprised to find an app like this in the market. It feels so much better to get apps for almost any need.
Disccat is perfect for my need. Just what i expected it to be. I added a few titles and thought this feedback will make a better user experience
1. I have ten bluray discs from Sony. They have a different barcode with just 5 digits. Its not like UPC or EAN format. Its different and i cannot add them. I also have some regional dvd discs here in india, which don’t have any barcode printed on the covers. I cannot add them also.
It would be nice if i can manually add discs which doesn’t have a UPA, EAC or any other code.
2. The main screen shows Barcode Column, Scan Button, Search Button, Title Column, Owned Only Checkbox, Search Button and Display all titles Button.
It would be nice to see the first three objects under a Title like “Add Disc”, “Add New Media”,…
And the other objects under a Title “My Discs”, “Existing Discs”, “Discs Database”, or something like that.
Hope this feedback helps. Nice work dude!
Thanks for the feedback and suggestions.
Manual addition of items without a barcode currently isn’t possible as I use the barcode internally in a few places. However, as part of the user interface redesign I am going to be making changes to the database so I will be seeing what I can do to remove my reliance on items having a barcode.
The user interface redesign is going to have tabs along the top of the screen e.g. one tab for adding new items, another tab for searching the database, etc. This redesign is a fair amount of work, so I won’t be releasing any new versions for a week or two while I work on it. Hopefully by the time it is done, there will be space for a lot more information on each item e.g. IMDB link, cover image, wishlist, synopsis, prices, etc.
I have the first set of tabs in and working today, and it is looking a lot better I think. Hopefully things continue to progress well 🙂
Love the app. Used it to catalog all my DVDs. One suggestion I have is a check-in / check out tab. I have a ton of DVDs, and often people barrow a DVD. It’d be nice to have a tab for checking a DVD in or out of my collection with the bar code and a simple note for who it was loaned to.
Haven’t played with the settings to much, but one problem I noticed was, when you added in the ads, you forgot to account for the screen space it takes up. Once the ads pop up, and you go to change the “Types” option, you can’t click xbox360 as the ad is over it, and you can’t scroll it up over the ad to click it.
Thanks for the feedback.
I will definitely add check-in and out. I am not sure when, but likely after photo cropping is complete.
The bug with ads – I don’t actually see it on my phone. Here, the list of items pops up on top of the ad – if you do see this, would you be able to tell me what model handset you have so I can test further?
The popup menu is meant to appear on top of everything, which is indeed the behaviour I see on both the official Android emulator and on my HTC Magic, so I need to know what model phone you have so I can get the appropriate manufacturer emulator and test on that.
Thanks
Tim