Looking for a searchable solution for appliance/tool/etc user manuals
I’m in the middle of a major home renovation. As such I’m trying to adult responsibly and I’m keeping all the physical booklets for appliances/tools and basically everything. This has turned into a whole folder of paperwork I’m realistically going to need one…
I’m in the middle of a major home renovation. As such I’m trying to adult responsibly and I’m keeping all the physical booklets for appliances/tools and basically everything. This has turned into a whole folder of paperwork I’m realistically going to need one thing out of once in a blue moon. Given most of these manuals are online to download, or I suppose I could scan them, is there a solution to a digital store for these? With some easy lookup method too would be wonderful! EDIT: I’ll check out Paperless-NGX, thanks all :)
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That's a valid solution, though not a selfhosted one. Having them on a usb key or an external hard drive would be simple self hosted offline solutions. If you already have a dedicated machine for self hosting, then something like Nextcloud (albeit a bit overkill for a few manuals) could be a solution as backup on top of having the files on your computer. A simple shared folder could do the trick as well.
Paperless has an ai extension, if you want to avoid cloud. Also theres this https://gitex.calicolicker.net/Oriole/ikea-archive Someone scraped all manuals from Ikea, which you might need
Thanks, I’ll have a proper look at that too
all good. an example from my own house here. notice in the attachments i have the user manual as well as the order confirmation and warranty paperwork. The 'maintenance' tab also has various scheduled job alerts in it.
Oh, I didn’t even think about AI for interrogation!
Paperless NGX is the natural first answer to this, but I actually think Homebox might be a better option - https://homebox.software/en With Homebox you can do the following (that suits your particular situation) Record item details (appliance for example) - name / make / model / quantity / serial number / extended detailed notes / insured or not / where in your house it's stored or located. Record who you bought it from, on what date and the cost when purchased Upload an image of the item Upload the user manual for the item Add any warranty details including expiration Add a maintenance schedule with email reminders I feel that, given what you're in the middle of, that could be a better solution than just saving a pdf, with the added bonus of creating an item log that's all priced up which you can give to your insurance company if your house burns down. Otherwise you might as well just put all the PDFs in a folder on a pc or cloud drive and call it a day without needing to spin up a whole complicated solution for it.
Paperless ngx is a good option. Can most likely find all of the owners manuals as digital pdf and upload it on there. Another option that I've considered is HomeLogger I believe it's called, a spin-off of lube logger but for household maintenance tracking and such. Can easily tie the appropriate documentation to each appliance or whatever listing in there. Probably not as searchable, but organized well enough to not necessarily need searching
Paperless-NGX.
I just download them and put everything in a folder under simple categories like Computer stuff, Tools, Audio, Video, etc. I don't really see which functionality I would need from a dedicated software.
This is an actual a good use for a sandboxed AI. feed it manuals, house blueprints, pdfs, car schematics, warranties, correspondence, your local building code. Then you can ask for what you want
I guess download all the manuals and upload them to Google NotebookLM. You can ask questions in NotebookLM if you want to find anything about a specific appliance