My wife and I have been pretty quiet on here recently and haven't gone on many trips since this past winter. I have been hard at work learning a new programming language to build a new Android and iPhone app that all hikers, backpackers, kayakers, or any other type of adventurer can use to plan their next trip!
Our app is called "Don't Forget The Spoon" and is mobile application that lets you keep track of all the gear you own in your own private "Gear Locker" on your phone. You can then build different "Packs" for different adventures to analyze pack stats like weight.
We decided to build this app because.... you guessed it we often forget to pack our spoons when we go on backpacking adventures. With our app, you can mark items as packed to easily keep track of all your gear while packing for a big trip!
Download App
Download Don't Forget the Spoon in your phone's app store now!
If you try the app out please make a thread in this forum and let me know what you think! I got a lot of awesome stuff planned!
Additionally since I have not coded out the onboarding experience yet here are some pictures and tips below!
Pack List
The packlist is where you will create and access your different 'packs' for your adventures. Before creating a pack I recommend you first go to your "Gear Locker" and add gear. Items in your "Gear Locker" will be available to add into your packs.
Gear Locker
The Gear locker is a list of all the items you own. You can click the + button in the bottom right to add gear.
While adding gear you can input:
- Item Name
- Manufacturer
- Item Type
- Pack Category
- Item Weight
- Temperature rating (only used for items like sleeping bags etc. )
- Volume (Only Used for packs, water bottle etc. )
- Calories (Only used for meals and snacks)
If share with community is marked as "yes" then the item will be reviewed and added to the community database to help users find gear to add. More on this in the next section. If you do not want to share gear info you can mark that to "no"
There are drop downs for some of these fields that filter as you type. You can type free form and type anything if it is not found in the drop down. If you feel something should be added to any of the drop down, let us know! This is the beta and we are adding things daily!
Find Gear
The find gear section is the community database of gear. This is another way to add gear to your Gear Locker if you do not want to manually type the details in. Since this is community built its not super full right now, but I am adding items weekly. Feel free to give it a spin!
Packs
Once you have some items in your Gear Locker you can start adding items to your pack! Just like adding gear to your Gear Locker you can add items from your gear locker to your pack by clicking the + icon in the bottom right inside of a pack.
When you click the + button you will be presented with a list of all the items in your Gear Locker. Tap each items you want to add to your pack and a check box will appear.
If you are like me and have a lot of items in your Gear Locker, you can quickly filter this list by tapping the search icon at the top and typing an item name or manufacturer name.
By tapping on an item in your pack you can edit its details such as quantity, Worn Weight, Consumable, or if the item is packed or not. Just make sure to click the "Save Edits" once done.
Once you have some items in your pack you can explore the pack detail cards by swiping to the left on the top half.
The first initial card shows total Pack Weight. summary and shows weights broken down by Item Pack category. Any of the bar graphs can be tapped, and this will filter the list of items. So for example if I want to just see my "Clothing" items, I can tap the clothing bar graph and it auto filters to just those items:
The next card shows a break down of your weight by base weight, consumable weight and work weight. Again just like the previous card you can tap any of the bar graph bars and it will filter your list to only show the Base Weight Items, Consumable Weight Items or Worn Weight items.
The next card will show you the percent packed. As you are packing items for your trip you can mark them as packed. Previously I mentioned you could tap and item to edit it and mark it as packed. The shortcut to packing items, is you can swipe right on an item in your list and it will mark it as packed. Or Swipe left to unpack an item quickly. As you pack items the percent pack will automatically update.
The last card is just a summary of items by manufacturer in your pack. Again you can tap any of the bar graphs to then filter your list to just see all the items from that one manufacturer.
Overall this is the initial beta of the app. There are a lot more features to come that are on my current roadmap! Please try out the app and share your honest feedback with me! Excited to see what you all think!
