What do you look for in an electronic build log system?

I see pretty frequent discussion here about what to use for a build log. Kitlog Pro obviously comes up pretty frequently, and after taking a look at it, I can see why; it seems to be pretty feature-rich, helping guide you through the entire build and certification process. (of course, if you're a non-Windows user, then Kitlog is a non-starter)

I've also seen a lot of people using various generic blogging platforms...Wordpress, Blogger, etc. I went with a customized Wordpress install for my log; I kind of have an advantage here since Web development work is my day job, so I've got useful skills to apply in doing the custom stuff I wanted to Wordpress.

Anyway, I've been thinking - and this is where you guys all come in - that maybe there's a place for a "middle ground" solution that's somewhere between Kitlog (lots and lots of builder-useful features) and generic blogging solutions. (no builder-specific features at all)

Basically, I'm thinking of something like wordpress.com, but fine-tuned with the kit builder in mind. It starts with WP's inherent user-friendliness, and to that I add some basic plugins to handle common builder-oriented tasks, such as time tracking and the ability to easily download/print a hard copy of the entire build log.

Obviously a good backup architecture is a must. After all, none of you are going to trust me with this extremely valuable data if it's not well-protected, are you? I sure wouldn't.

If this theoretical service existed, what would you need to see to convince you that it was the right tool for your job? Assume that it would be either free or very inexpensive.

Thoughts?

Also, a final editorial note: I hope this post doesn't run afoul of the unpaid advertising restriction here. It's not my intention to subvert that system, but merely to do some market research.

Actually, I have another question. I know a number of people go with the tried-and-true method of just keeping notes and photos in a binder in their workshop, and eschewing the electronic medium entirely.

If you're one of the physical-log guys, what makes you choose that over an electronic method? I don't think I can ever hope to replace the flexibility of a piece of paper and a pen, but maybe I can make something attractive enough to pull more people into the electronic log world.

It's a good question. I went with a Wordpress blog with a few little custom tweaks because it does what I want it to, and I host it on my own web server (OK, a hosted virtual, but still...) I've got MySQL replication and backup scripts to make sure nothing short of the apocalypse can wipe it all out.

That said... some days I half wish I had gone with Kitlog Pro, simply because of a few features that I know would take a lot of effort to add to my WP blog. Some I may add eventually, some I'm just hoping someone will come up with a plugin to address. I'm not inclined to abandon building an airplane to write and maintain code.

Here's what I would want to see in a build log system:

• A way to track hours, preferably per section (emp/wings/fuse/panel etc).
• Not as big a deal for me, but... a way to track other user-defined things. Rivets set, beers consumed, rivets drilled out, fingers smashed, trim tabs ruined, etc.
• Automated backups, with the ability to restore without having to call someone.
• Here's a big one... and one I'm currently struggling to find for my own. A way to take the entire build log, once finished, and get it into a single PDF volume, decently formatted with text and pictures, that I could print and put in a binder.
• A killer feature for me would be the ability to customize and generate a POH and other documentation.

Some stuff is pretty easy to do with existing plugins, some not.

The big challenge I see to doing this as a commercial, or even semi-commercial thing... you can get a WP blog for free, with limited storage. If you're a geek like us, you can host your own WP blog, and in my case it is free. Or you can pay for Kitlog Pro once, and I think their web stuff is free, isn't it? So you'd either need to just charge a one-time fee, or be OK with maintaining and preserving a growing amount of user data, forever, with no revenue to support it other than new builders. Any monthly fee worth collecting would quickly exceed the cost of a one-time solution like Kitlog. Of course the Linux & Mac users would love you, but that's a pretty small population.

Would it be a great service to the E/AB community? You bet it would. Would it be fun to do as a hobby/volunteer effort? Sure... for a while. The novelty would wear off pretty quickly. As a commercial effort... well, better you than me. But I'm jaded. I have a family, a full time day job, a very active and time consuming sideline business, I support an EAA chapter web site, a flying club, and I'm building an airplane. I'll cheer you on from the sidelines and hope you make lots of nice WP plugins I can use.

DaleB said:

It's a good question. I went with a Wordpress blog with a few little custom tweaks because it does what I want it to, and I host it on my own web server (OK, a hosted virtual, but still...) I've got MySQL replication and backup scripts to make sure nothing short of the apocalypse can wipe it all out.

That said... some days I half wish I had gone with Kitlog Pro, simply because of a few features that I know would take a lot of effort to add to my WP blog. Some I may add eventually, some I'm just hoping someone will come up with a plugin to address. I'm not inclined to abandon building an airplane to write and maintain code.

Here's what I would want to see in a build log system:

• A way to track hours, preferably per section (emp/wings/fuse/panel etc).
• Not as big a deal for me, but... a way to track other user-defined things. Rivets set, beers consumed, rivets drilled out, fingers smashed, trim tabs ruined, etc.
• Automated backups, with the ability to restore without having to call someone.
• Here's a big one... and one I'm currently struggling to find for my own. A way to take the entire build log, once finished, and get it into a single PDF volume, decently formatted with text and pictures, that I could print and put in a binder.
• A killer feature for me would be the ability to customize and generate a POH and other documentation.

Some stuff is pretty easy to do with existing plugins, some not.

Click to expand...

Lots of good points. I suppose part of my motivation here is to open up these useful plugins to a larger portion of the population. There's a hour-tracking plugin out there that lets you track by category... but it's all kinds of buggy. I was able to beat on it some and make it (mostly) work, and that's fine for me, but for the majority of builders out there, it's useless.

I could make a useful, stable plugin, and make it available for everyone, but I lose control over it with it being out in the wild. For some people, the mere act of setting up Wordpress and installing plugins might be not worth the effort.

So my thinking is to open up the online blogging world and make it ridiculously simple for your average Joe to fire up a build log and have the tools he needs at hand, ready to roll.

(If you're muttering "easier said than done" under your breath right now...I'm right there with you...)

The big challenge I see to doing this as a commercial, or even semi-commercial thing... you can get a WP blog for free, with limited storage. If you're a geek like us, you can host your own WP blog, and in my case it is free. Or you can pay for Kitlog Pro once, and I think their web stuff is free, isn't it? So you'd either need to just charge a one-time fee, or be OK with maintaining and preserving a growing amount of user data, forever, with no revenue to support it other than new builders. Any monthly fee worth collecting would quickly exceed the cost of a one-time solution like Kitlog. Of course the Linux & Mac users would love you, but that's a pretty small population.

Would it be a great service to the E/AB community? You bet it would. Would it be fun to do as a hobby/volunteer effort? Sure... for a while. The novelty would wear off pretty quickly. As a commercial effort... well, better you than me. But I'm jaded. I have a family, a full time day job, a very active and time consuming sideline business, I support an EAA chapter web site, a flying club, and I'm building an airplane. I'll cheer you on from the sidelines and hope you make lots of nice WP plugins I can use.

Click to expand...

Yeah, the economics of the thing will be fun to work out. I have experience with large-scale web apps, so I think I can handle the challenge of scaling efficiently and minimizing cost, but it's still going to be a monthly maintenance cost that I need to recover somehow.

If I really want to do this, I'll definitely have to sit down and do a detailed analysis of how I expect hosting costs and so forth to work out, and find out how to at least break even. I just looked and realized how stupid cheap Kitlog is...going to be hard to beat that price! Making it ad-supported is one possible alternative, too...more to think about there.

What I don't want to do, as a guy who's personally invested in the E-AB community, is to make something like this, have it work great in the beginning, but then find that's it's unsustainable in the long term once I start building a bunch of users. I don't want to have to shut this down and put my fellow builders in a hard spot, so it's important to me to make this sustainable from the get-go...inasmuch as that's possible...

Basically, my perspective is this: I sit in an office 40 hours a week doing dev work. I don't hate my job (well, not most days), but I find my work absolutely uninspiring. My goal in life is to find a way to use my skills to do things that I care about, and this is just one idea I've come up with. I'm pretty skeptical of it being anything resembling an actual viable business, but even if it brings in a small amount of income, it's a small step along my path to breaking out of the rat race rut I feel stuck in.

Are you any good at mobile device code? While I haven't started banging my own rivets yet I would pay for something that I can post to with my iOS devices once I start building. Something that looks elegant on these devices as well as a laptop, PC, or Mac would be stellar. I have tons of build logs I follow and the Kitlog ones are the least appealing to the eye. It looks like it was done with HTML that I learned in junior high. The demands today are multiple devices. I am a blogspot (Google product) user, but hate the way the blog feels on mobile devices. I like the Wordpress sites I follow. If it was tailored for easy input by builders it would be neat.

BTW your log layout looks good on the iPhone.

pilottangocharlie said:

Are you any good at mobile device code? While I haven't started banging my own rivets yet I would pay for something that I can post to with my iOS devices once I start building. Something that looks elegant on these devices as well as a laptop, PC, or Mac would be stellar. I have tons of build logs I follow and the Kitlog ones are the least appealing to the eye. It looks like it was done with HTML that I learned in junior high. The demands today are multiple devices. I am a blogspot (Google product) user, but hate the way the blog feels on mobile devices. I like the Wordpress sites I follow. If it was tailored for easy input by builders it would be neat.

BTW your log layout looks good on the iPhone.

Click to expand...

As a matter of fact, the current project I'm working on at work involves responsive web design, which is the Shiny New Technology for dealing with mobile devices and such. At this point, anything I build in my personal world is going to include that technology, and (hopefully) look good on any device out there. (Here's an example of a responsive site: http://www.dimespring.com/. That's a project I was involved in at my last job.)

As for posting from your iPhone...one of the nice things about Wordpress is that it has a good API available. So there are lots of desktop apps that can be used for authoring posts without having to literally open a browser, go to your blog, log in to the admin, upload images, write the post there, and so on. (I use MarsEdit) So users aren't necessarily tied to one single admin interface, which I think is a big selling point for usability.

More to your point, a quick Google search shows an official Wordpress app for iOS...so posting from your phone would be easily doable right off the bat.

What I've thought about in the past is to come up with a themable Wordpress template for building projects, then writing a PhoneGap application to upload photos, writeups, whatnot that would work on different mobile devices.

Wow I,m old!

Notes with dates on my plans...no log,blog,internet,download,or backup. Took 15 years to build, needed readers in the final couple years. Plane flew great first flight, and I can still look at my plans and recall every minute...just saying, build it !!!

I would have gone with kitlog, but limiting posts to 3 pictures was a deal breaker for me. I just keep mine on my computer using word now and sometimes put pictures on photobucket if I want to show someone.

Limit?

rockwoodrv9 said:

I would have gone with kitlog, but limiting posts to 3 pictures was a deal breaker for me. I just keep mine on my computer using word now and sometimes put pictures on photobucket if I want to show someone.

Click to expand...

When 3 pics ain't enough I just add subsequent posts to display additional photos, no words necessary. This is simple and much faster than a web upload.

My advice is simplicity. This is all about building a plane, then using it, for me. Not building a website. In fact, updating my build log was fun at first but now has just become a task that takes time from building. Kitlog is simple and effective, built for this purpose. Easy to view compared to most websites I've searched as well... There are exceptions of course - smitty and Bruce hill both do a real nice job, for example.

I made it as easy as I could and went with Excel. Here is what I wrote on my website:
(Click on the pictures to enlarge.)

N941WR said:

February 20, 2005 - Builder's Log Book

Log books are such a pain to maintain and I'm such a bad writer that I thought I would put my computer skills to use for maintaining my log book.


Excel is such a great tool! Here is what my log pages look like. Excel even has a "Hyper Link" feature that lets you link a cell to a picture. While looking at my log in Excel I can click on the link and the picture will pop up.

There is a tab on the worksheet that will produce the HTML code to print and label the pictures for my builders log once you copy and paste the code to a text editor and open it in your web browser.

This is a sample of the spreadsheet I created. If you are going to use this, you will need to modify it to match the directory structure on your computer. Please don't call or email me with Excel questions. I am very good with this tool but trying to walk someone through a computer issue via email is a challenge.

Here is a sample of the HTML code I used to print the images. Save the file on your drive and open it using the text editor. You will need to leave the header section in place and paste the picture producing text (first three columns from the "Image Printing" tab on the spreadsheet) in to it, save the thing, and then open it IE or whatever web browser you are using.

Click to expand...

With my first build I started the electronic log but soon learned if getting it done was the priority that a digital camera that stayed in the shop was all I needed. that kept me working on the project vs. in front of the computer. If a detailed build log is something you value then you should do it.

Ruby on Rails Builder's Log

Has anyone started working on this Builder's Log site idea? I might collaborate with someone if anyone has started. There is an awesome customizable technology called OctoPress that might fit the bill.

But a really good start on requirements would be a must for a solid database backed site. I'm exploring if there is a way to somehow leverage free storage sites like Google Docs or SkyDrive to potentially host the site (or backup data continuously).

Take a look at this one for iPad:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/aircraft-builder-build-log/id633828526?ls=1&mt=8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lypgwz0WfHo&feature=youtu.be