Hello everyone,

For many years, now, I've been keeping an Excel spreadsheet, which contains a list of all of my outdoor gear and its weight data. Needless to say, it's an outdated method for calculating my loaded backpack weight. So, from time to time, I had searched the web, looking to see if someone had developed an easier online method, using a vast, up-to-date database of popular outdoor products. Unfortunately, the only results I ever found were, basically, similar spreadsheet templates, in which I still needed to enter my own gear data. I got tired of looking, so I decided to develop such an online pack-weight calculator of my own.

It's far from complete, but it's fairly presentable, so I'd really appreciate anyone who'd be willing to test it and offer me some feedback. This site and its service is completely free to everyone, and I hope it serves as a valuable tool in the backpacking community. Here you go: http://www.weighmygear.com/

Looks pretty snazzy. Are the gear weights in the database based on manufacturer claims, or have these actually been physically weighed by you or others?

Thanks. About 90% of the weight data has come directly from the manufacturers' sites or other well-trusted online gear retail sites. The remaining 10% has been manually weighed by us.

Looks pretty neat. Non of my main gear was listed. Also My hammock is lighter than stock with woopieslings. Its a nice idea, but so many of us alter original equipment, to lighten it up. Sometimes just to better suit our needs. If weights are from manufacture, they often vary from manufacturing process. I am sure it will get some people close though. It would also be usefull for looking up suggested manufacture weight of different gear before purchasing.

Many thanks for the feedback! Shame to hear none of your main gear was listed, but I completely understand that many people customize their gear. That's why we configured the system to allow users to enter their own custom weight adjustments to gear already in the database, or to enter your own gear altogether.

To make an adjustment to an item already in the database, first, select it from the list and place it in your pack. Then, once it's in your pack, you can go back to the left-side checklist, enter your adjusted weight value, and then click the black arrow button next to the weight. As you'll see, it adjusts the weight of your pack on the right side.

To enter your own gear that's not in the database at all, just type in its name and weight in the appropriate fields, and click that same black arrow button next to the weight. Not only will that add the item to your own pack, but if you're a registered member, upon verification by our staff, your item will be added to the public database for others to use in the future.

Also, keep in mind, the database is still in it's infancy. We're still adding up to 100 items per day, ourselves, plus we hope to have a lot of user contributions, as well.

Lastly, yes, using this site as a decision-making tool when purchasing new gear was one of our primary intentions. I hope the community finds value in this.

Again, thanks for your feedback! We'll use it to improve.

It's a fantastic idea, I wish you the best. My own reaction was similar, however --- Lightheart designs tent, not there, nor tarptent models. ULA packs -- not there. WM sleeping bags were there but not the model I most typically carry and my bags are now overstuffed anyway.

I hope that you do get the database up to a sort of tipping point, a critical mass level where more and more folks will find it compelling.

I have to wonder why you want people to "join" --- do you have hopes to monetize this in some way down the road, and in general what are you doing with the information? There's certainly no need to do this if it's strictly a .org type of effort (rather than a .com) ?
To be clear, I'm not suggesting that a profit motive is bad (!), I'd just prefer to see that made clear up-front if so.

I have my own spreadsheet so probably would not use another. Regardless of who's spreadsheet you use, when all is put together in the pack, it is a good idea to step on the scales and verify the weight. And then resist the temptation to throw in more items from your trunk just before walking down the trail! PS- I do this all the time. Realistically, I should just add a pound for "last minute items".

Brian, thanks a ton for the feedback. Yep, I had no illusion about 6000 items being enough to cover everyone's gear list, but I figured it was a pretty good start. Actually, we already have an additional 15000 items in the database, but those items are still waiting for their weight data to be entered. As you can imagine, it's an enormous effort for a small all-volunteer staff. That's why, to some degree, we're counting on our users to start submitting some of their own gear weight data to contribute to the cause.

To answer your question about joining, yes, we do plan on monetizing the site down the road, although the methods are still being discussed. For example, though, in order to sell advertising space, it would be to our benefit to maintain membership data to provide to the advertisers. Sometimes simple site traffic data isn't enough. While it's a bit unorthodox for a website to explain its monetization strategies up-front, we'll consider placing this info on the Join page.

Thanks, again, for your great questions and feedback!

Thanks for your comments, daisy! Just to clarify, though, this is not just another spreadsheet application -- it's much more.

Well, I had the same experience: my REI sub-kilo bag isn't on there, nor is my home-made tent. And I suspect that most of the other stuff I have needs to be adapted and adjusted.

Which means that this is a really massive site, but it doesn't actually serve my needs, because it doesn't address my equipment. And if that is the case for most of the people on these boards, I wonder who your target audience is?

It may be so much more than a spreadsheet, but it doesn't do the work my spreadsheet does for my equipment.

You too, eh! Sometimes I think it is genetic.

Update for you, Brian. Ask and you shall receive... all current Light Heart Gear tents and accessories, as well as all current ULA packs, pack covers and stuff sacks are now in our database. We'll work on the Tarptent products through the day. Hope this helps!

Hi, balzaccom. Thanks for your comments. I apologize if I've mislead you about the goals, and the limitations, of our new site. As I mentioned in a previous post, we just released this test version of the site yesterday, and our 6000-item database is just a starting point. This site will always be a work-in-progress. Each year, we intend to add thousands of new products. So, in time, I'm confident that this tool will help more and more people.

Regarding your question about our target audience, if you take a close look at the variety of checklists on the site, backpackers are just one part of our audience. We are also catering to climbers, mountaineers and backcountry skiers, who, from my experience, tend to use factory-made gear entirely, rather than make their own.

Naturally, your homemade tent wasn't listed. It would be impossible for us to account for everyone's homemade gear, but this site, at least, still provides a method for users to enter and store their homemade gear, just as a spreadsheet would. If a user registers and saves his/her gear list, that list can be accessed from any web-connected computer around the world, so a user doesn't need to worry about taking his/her laptop with the Excel file when traveling.

We do recognize that we're lacking all REI gear, and that's definitely an issue we plan on tackling soon. Unfortunately, it's far from a small task to add all of REI's gear.

If you have other smaller specialty manufacturers you'd like to see added, we'd be happy to accommodate your requests as best as we can. In fact, another BP member recently posted that our database does not include any Light Heart tents or ULA packs. Based upon that simple comment, we added all of those items right away.

Update #2 for Brian... we've added all current Tarptent tents, and we've filled in all of Western Mountaineering's 25-40F bags, as well as most of their others. There are still a couple gaps in WM's list, but we're getting there.

Getting back to the Light Heart and ULA gear we added this morning, as you may know, many of those products are customizable to some degree. So, the weights we entered were the base-weights listed on the manufacturers' sites. As I've mentioned earlier, you can make your own custom weight adjustments from there.

I like it! I have many ideas on how you can improve it, but I think you have the right foundation to be a great product.

First: This should be available as a mobile app (Android and iwhatever). You could get some inspiration from the calorie counting app my wife has been using to loose weight.

Second: I think you should make it more seamless for users to enter data into the database. You shouldn't burden yourself with entering the data. If Wikipedia taught us anything its that community information is often more powerful than even expert information.

Third: You should think about how to handle having multiple weights in your database for the same piece of equipment. For instance one weight could be tagged as manufacturer specified. Another for a weight weighed by a user. Perhaps another for the weight for a user modified piece of equipment (perhaps even a quick note to how it was modified). Another tag for different sizes. Manufacturers usually only specify the weight for one size of a piece of clothing. Actual weight varies based on the size you bought.

Fourth: It seems like the user should be able to modify the field headers and even the order in which the fields are entered.

Those are my thoughts for now. Good luck!

BZH, now that's some great feedback! Thank you! Actually, we're already on the same page on most accounts...

1. A mobile app has already been discussed, but we're waiting to see what the general response is for the main site, first, before we put development time into the mobile app.

2 and 3. I'm not sure what you mean by "seamless" exactly, but the system does already allow any user to enter their own gear. Community contribution is one of our primary goals. If the user is not registered, then their item will only be temporarily added to their own personal pack. However, if the user is registered, then the item s/he enters will be automatically added to a separate, but connected, database. This allows our staff to moderate/verify user-entries before going public with them. And, as you suggested, this also allows the system to tag the item as 'user-entered', so it can be distinguished from the factory-weight items our staff has entered. So, in short, the system does already allow for multiple weights of the same items. Also, for many, but not all, items, the system already lists separate weights for different sizes. I believe this is best demonstrated among the main packs, skis and climbing protection.

The only reason we entered a few dozen items today, upon the comment of another BP member, was entirely voluntary on our part. We could've asked the poster to enter his own gear, but we also wanted to demonstrate that we're responsive to feedback and dedicated to making this a very valuable tool for the community.

4. Modifying the field headers and their orders... hmmmm. Let us think about that one. I agree it could be a benefit, but I have a feeling it might need to be a Version 2.0 feature.

That's a great app! Very nicely done!!

As for feedback, I'll offer some suggestions:

* I'd like to see an "Other" added to each of your categories.

* It'd be nice if we could select the weight standard we wanted to input, like ounces or grams.

* For water and liquid fuels I think it'd be good if we could just enter the number of oz or ml and the weight of our containers for them.

* It'd be nice if you could create a "Print" CSS file so only the gear list and weights are printed (your logo would be okay there too ) and it would generally fit on one page.

* And, of course, it would be nice to be able to email or "Share" a list with friends.

* I suppose it might be fun to have a "Demo" list pre-filled with items so people could review and play with them. Perhaps you could do several, like an Ultra-light, Light, Standard, etc.

Anyway, I think it's pretty darn cool. Thank you for sharing the hard work and effort you've put into this, and please keep us posted on your progress and any new features you add.

I agree that you need to enter as much data as possible yourself to get your tool up and running and useable for people. What I meant by seamless is that entries are automatically added to the public database. You could perhaps filter it: look for spam, exclude 100 lb sleeping bags, or pieces of equipment with four letter words in it. You could also let people flag inappropriate entries which would then get reviewed. But what I was suggesting is your database be automatically expanded and your staff (perhaps even volunteers) just review stuff that is grey area.... I am trying to make less work for you!

As far as the order goes, I did something similar to that with a "To Do" list using the prototype libraries. You can see it at www.ezInvoice.com.

If you want to try it out:

* Login with the user/pass "demo"

* Click on the "Note/New" tab

* Click the "Add a Reminder" link.

* Fill out the form, check the "Place Note as Reminder on Home Screen." checkbox, and click the "Save Note" button.

Do that several times so you have several notes displaying, then drag and drop the notes in the order you want them. The app saves the order of the notes.

A couple more thoughts: You should list on the registration page that a reason to register is so you can access you gear list from anywhere. Also, it would be nice to be able to enter all of your gear into an equipment list and then select a group of that gear for a particular trip list.

Bill, thanks for your compliments and your suggestions -- all great ones!

1. Yes, adding an "Other" field to each category is a good idea. What we've already done is add a "Misc" category at the very bottom of each checklist, with several fields in it. Hopefully, that will cover most "other" needs for now.

2. We had talked about offering the option to enter weights in either oz or g, but all of our own data is already in g, so we wanted to keep everything completely uniform. To help users who only know their gear weights in oz, we've already added an easy weight converter right at the top of each checklist. On a related note, as I hope you noticed, when compiling your pack, the weight is output in both lb/oz and g.

3. Yes, although we already have water listed in 3 volumes (pint, quart and gallon), we'll go ahead and break it down into oz, as well. Same with the liquid fuel. Great idea!

4. The system already utilizes a "print" CSS file, which allows a clean print of just your compiled gear. However, this is a member-only feature, so you will need to register before being able to print directly via the site functions.

5. Yes, an email/share feature is already on our to-do list. We had hoped to have it done for this Alpha release, but we didn't quite get it done yet. We figured adding more items was a higher priority at the moment. Be assured though, it will be added fairly soon.

6. Yep, we'd had also considered a "Demo List" feature, but it didn't make our priority cut. We weren't entire sure of its value. If we get more requests for it, we'll make it happen.

Again, thanks for your compliments, your suggestions and your time!

BZH, another great suggestion about the membership benefits -- I've already added it. Thanks!

Let me think about your gear list suggestion. To some extent, I believe the existing ability to save multiple gear lists handles this.

I really like the program. You have done a very nice job with it.

To test it, I randomly went through and selected things. The pack ended up lighter than mine, but I'll be wearing woman's underwear.

Unfortunately, I couldn't figure out how to change an item once it was selected and I went past it.

Gershon,

Really glad you like the app! In order to modify an item you've already selected, simply type over its data within the right-side checklist, and then click the black arrow button (next to the weight field) to submit the edits. By doing this, you should be able to edit the gear name, size and weight. Hope that helps, but feel free to ask further questions if necessary.

Hi there
I have a critique based on experience with electronics circuit board design using library database on components. Often its wrong and the components cannot be solderd onto their pads because of inaccurate dimensional data. (when I designed circuit cards I made the CAD/components guys check every outline) Most library driven systems depend upon rebuilding components, in the database, which is a waste of time for an individual. Multiple entries for each item are not allowed, yet my tent may weigh 5 ounces more than someone elses because - its seam sealed, or dirty, or has an extra flap sewed to it. Its the ponderous side of computer usage.
Jim

Hi Jimshaw,

Actually, multiple entries, as well as custom entries ARE allowed. If you see your tent already listed in the database, go ahead and select it. Then, if you think your customized version of it is 5 oz heavier, just re-type that weight over the factory weight value, and click the black arrow button next to the weight to submit your custom value. Hope that addresses your concern.

Yeah, but he lets you input the data manually or select from the data stored, so that's not an issue with his app

Hmm, from a user standpoint it's easier if the app converts the data. From a programming standpoint it's simple enough to do the conversions ("easy weight converter"), so I don't understand the logic in that approach.

Hi, Bill. Sorry, I gave you the quick explanation, at first, which obviously didn't entirely answer your question. You're absolutely correct -- programmatically, it would be very easy to do, and it could (maybe?) be easier on the user, too. However, there was one other scenario we couldn't ignore, which steered us away from giving the user the option for standard vs. metric weight entries.

To be specific, we considered the scenario of a user not having a home scale at all and needing to rely entirely on web research to fill in the weight data, if not already in our database. In this case, the user would be faced with finding both standard and metric values, from one item to the next, depending on how the manufacturer listed the data.

So, in order to try to accommodate this scenario, we decided we would need one of two things. Either:

1. A master "standard/metric" switch at the top of the page, which the user would need to remember to switch back and forth between items. The drawback to this is that, without any doubts at all, users would inevitably forget to flip the switch every once in awhile and would inadvertently enter inaccurate data. We felt this would cause more problems in the long run.

Or 2. An individual "standard/metric" switch on each line, next to the weight field. I do think this would help remind users to set the appropriate selection each time they enter their data, but we felt this would add a lot of clutter to an already "busy" interface. We figured if we were going to allow entry of standard values, then we'd need 2 fields -- lbs and oz. Having a single metric field seemed so much cleaner from an interface design perspective.

With those things in mind, we decided it would be best to just force users to enter just one weight system. We feel this will prevent the accidental entry of inaccurate data that might be caused by a simple oversight of a switch.

Hope that clears up our logic a bit more.

I would have to agree. There should be a pull down menu after the weight field. The default could be grams, but have the option to select others weights. You can still have your software convert and store everything in grams.

Hi, BZH. I just posted something on why we opted against offering the drop-downs to begin with, but after this discussion, we'll be seriously re-evaluating this feature.

I just want to thank everyone for their comments and suggestions about our new site, especially those of you who've joined WeighMyGear.com and have already begun to enter gear. For those people who have entered your own gear, we've already begun to approve your it. Our approval process will be in 2 steps: 1. We'll quickly scan the entries filtering out obvious inaccuracies (100 lb sleeping bags), profanity, etc. At this stage, your gear will be listed in yellow at the very bottom of the gear list for its category, indicating that it's an unverified user-entry. And 2.Once a member of our staff has a chance to actually verify its weight with the manufacturer's data, we'll move it into the main verified listings. Hope that makes sense. Thanks again!

As promised, the "Share via Email" feature has now been added.

I entered info on my backpack, but I don't think I saved it and so it disappeared out of my pack. Now, as you mentioned, it shows up in yellow at the bottom of the list, but when I select it it won't load into my pack.

Sorry for the trouble, BZH -- I'm looking into this now.

Ok, BZH, let's try it again -- that problem should be fixed now. Sorry again for the trouble, but that's why I came to you guys with this -- to put it through its paces and work out the bugs. By the way, did you notice the new "Email This Pack" feature?

Awesome!

Here are a few more thoughts...

If you added a checkbox for each item that we can use to include it in our weight, or not, and allowed us to "Add a Tent", for example, to any of the items in the default list, then we could make just one "Gear List" that contained ALL our gear.

Say I have 2 tents, 3 sleeping bags, and, like some that hang around here, 125 stoves. It'd be cool to be able to keep them all on one list and then check off just the items I'd like to bring on a trip and weigh them.

After making my selections from my gear list I'd want to be able to save that "Trip List" online, print the list (with the weights and totals), have the option to email it, and save the printable version on my own computer for offline use.

Thanks for listening and keep up the great work!!

Hey Bill, thanks, again, for your suggestions. I think those are great ideas, and we're going to seriously consider them for a near-future release. A "Save as PDF" was already on our to-do list.

For now, and I'm not trying to say this is a replacement for what you're suggesting, but perhaps a helpful hint, nonetheless... you can fully "load" your pack using the Backpacking Checklist and always keep it saved fully loaded. Then, when you're packing for a particular trip, open that saved "master" pack and instead of completely removing items you want to leave behind, just set their quantity to 0 (zero) instead. That way, you don't need to keep re-adding to your pack. When an item's quantity is set to zero, it will be omitted from both the printed and the emailed lists altogether, so they won't be cluttered with all the zeroed items. I hope that makes sense, and I hope it helps!

By the way, have yo actually tried the new Email function yet? Let me know if it causes you any trouble.

Cool, that's a good workaround!

I just signed up yesterday and played with it some more. I'll test the email function the next time I play with it.

You might also just let users save the html file. Web browsers allow a user to save an HTML document as an archive that contains the graphics and most OSs include a "Print to PDF" option.

One more thing, on a lot of those items I enter "Home Made" in the "GEAR NAME" textbox. Can you add that as a default option?

What I still need is a scale. Without that I can't take full advantage of your app. (You might want to offer some for sale )

Worked great!

Thanks!!!

Thanks to all of you have taken the time to offer your feedback during our Alpha Testing period over the past several weeks. We listened carefully, and we acted on much of that feedback. One of the biggest criticisms among the backpacking forums was/is the lack of cottage manufacturers' equipment. Certainly, neglecting those manufacturers was never our intention. It simply takes time to enter hundreds-to-thousands of pieces of gear into our database. With that in mind, just over the past 2 weeks, we've entered nearly-complete product lines (about 500 new items) from several cottage manufacturers, including:

Six Moon Designs
Katabatic Gear
Mountain Laurel Designs
Hennessy Hammocks
Gossamer Gear
Arrowhead Equipment
Enlightened Equipment

This adds to our list of existing gear lines by ZPacks, TarpTent, ULA Equipment and Lightheart Gear. And within the next two weeks, we plan on entering several hundred more items by Hyperlite Mountain Gear, BearPaw and Black Rock Gear, just to name a few. We're proud to represent all of these cottage manufacturers!

I'll also point out that the usage of the WeighMyGear app is not necessarily limited to weighing the gear you already own. As many people have mentioned, nothing replaces the act of actually packing your pack and weighing it directly on a scale. But what about the gear you don't own yet? What about your "wish list" of gear? Using this app, you can quickly and easily see the weight-effects on your pack by those pieces you can't directly weigh. This app can be a terrific decision-making tool when you're in the market for a new piece of gear, enabling you to compare relative weight-effects of various equipment with just a few clicks of your mouse, before you spend a dime.

Aside from continually adding new gear to the database, our Alpha Testing stage has also revealed a few programming bugs, which have now been fixed. So, WeighMyGear is now more stable, again, thanks to all of you who've participated. We're now entering our Beta Testing phase, and we'll be announcing the app to a larger audience. For this, we've also given the site a new look.

We hope you all continue to follow and use WeighMyGear.com. It will only become more robust and more useful, and we will always continue to listen to feedback and suggestions on how to improve.

One reason I would never, ever use this data is because I have found that most manufacturers' weights cannot be relied upon. I have in fact returned a number of gear items which were as much as 1/2 lb. more than the manufacturers' listed weights! This does not apply to most of the "cottage industry," which is generally more careful, but even so I trust only my own scale!

For BuckSgt: check out the articles and gear lists on the home page of this site. Note that the recommendations are for the Pacific Northwest; you may need to adjust to the climate where you are backpacking.

Hi OregonMouse,

Many thanks for your feedback. Yes, I agree, and I've even already stated, that there's no replacement for actually packing your pack and putting it on a scale, if you want to determine its actual weight. However, as I mentioned, that process requires that you actually own/have the gear to begin with. We've found that many novices and experts, alike, who are in the market to purchase new gear, are finding this site useful as a pre-purchase decision-making tool.

Granted, not all manufacturers' weights are perfectly accurate, but unless someone is able to personally visit each and every manufacturers' warehouse with his/her own scale in-hand, the average person needs to have a little faith in the manufacturers' data for comparative purposes. Sure, if the item arrives at your house, and it's way off the listed weight, then you certainly might have a reason to return it.

When you say you've found some gear weights to be off as much as 1/2 lb., that doesn't tell me much. What about percentage-wise? Just curious.

Wouldn't it be more accurate to just take an old scale to the trailhead then to go to all the trouble of learning to use a computer with all of its programs, bells and whistles. Just my 10 cents..

I weigh all of my gear on a small digital scale from Harbor Freight at home before heading out.

I have been tempted to get a digital type luggage or fishing type scale from Walmart to be able to weigh my fully loaded pack by just hanging it from the haul loop.

I have definitely used the pack on, pack off method on the old bathroom scale but I have found that this method varies wildly in the weight shown vs adding up all of the individual weights from my digital scale.

Newton

I just wanted to say that if you use "the sum of actual weights" that you will have to multiply what you get by a coeficient to get to reality. (1.1?) You always have more gear than the sum of the things that you weigh.
Jim

For all of you following this thread and the development of this new tool, you might be interested in knowing that we've installed a lot of new and useful features on WeighMyGear.com.

On top of entering hundreds of additional cottage-manufactured items into our gear database, we've also added an entire new Photography sub-list for all of you packing more than a pocket-sized point-and-shoot camera.

You'll also find several new shopping tools for those of you using WeighMyGear.com as a consumer resource. The pack-weight calculator now automatically offers price comparisons for all current gear among may of the top online retailers, such as REI, Backcountry, CampSaver and more. There's more, too, so take a new look when you get the chance.

http://www.weighmygear.com/

Well, I was about to sign up, but apparently I'm not allowed special characters in my password.

I hate to nitpick on what has obviously been a lot of hard work so far, but that's a pet peeve of mine It shouldn't matter what's in my password if it's being encrypted.

Any plans for special ways of organizing lists? Like specifying certain items as containers and marking items as 'inside' others, for example?

As a web app programmer I'd say that, yeah, you're being a little nit-picky

And yeah, it can matter what your username/password is. I'll offer a brief explanation:

The main reason programmers don't like special characters being submitted to their application is because they are used as "operators" within their code and there have been exploits (hacks) that have been exposed with their use.

Consider this as a username or password:

`rm ../../../*`;

In that line of code these characters are operators, "`", "*", and ";" in many programming languages. The "../../../" part is a path to files and directories.

Together, they tell some computers to delete everything in that path. If someone submitted that as a password or username to my app I'd reject it because I'd have to conclude they were up to no good. Since I don't want to test and approve all user submitted data I use algorithms to reject or filter input that contains those characters. Most often I just reject anything but alphanumerics.

There have been lots of methods created to prevent that kind of input from being executed as code, but new methods to break code still seem to pop up and from a programming standpoint it's probably still safer to reject suspicious input that's being submitted to your app. When that changes, so will my approach to this task.

Furthermore, this app doesn't ask you to submit any sensitive data at all, so a bombproof password isn't really going to protect much anyway. In this case, the username/password are really only used as a key to connect you with your data, not so much to secure it. So, in this case, as a programmer I might choose to allow passwords that aren't at all secure, but are much easier to remember and input, for the convenience of my users.

On the flip side of that, if I were creating an app that did store sensitive data I would have to consider not letting you choose your password at all, and instead have the app generate one that I know would offer the highest level of security. It wouldn't be very convenient for you, the user, but it would insure security.

I've mentioned before that I think these guys have done a great job on this app. Unless you've built something like this you really can't know how much work it is. It's whole a lotta love, and a whole lotta of work to make stuff like this.

We need to remember that they first offered this as "Beta" software. That means it's far enough along to let others test it out. Then they said it was heading into the "Alpha" stage of development, that means it's close to being ready for use everyday use because the feature set is mostly complete and working as expected. When all the bugs they're aware of have been squashed they will release it as a "1.0 version" of the software. After that, they will start working on all the features they've thought of and have been suggested in the process of building that 1.0 version.

I think they deserve our encouragement and support.

Even if you don't think you want this tool right now, for whatever reason, it could very well be that in the future we'll all be using it because it's so much better than a spreadsheet. I think it's already better, and it's just a first release.

--



That's an awesome idea. If you configured it with a hierarchical menu where you could put items inside a stuff sack it would make it easier to manage and view data.

It's a perfect software analogy too...

You start by opening your pack, and then looking inside at your gear, and stuff sacks filled with gear that you can open or close, and you check the items you're bringing on your trip and see the total weight instantly, and use the checklist to help make sure you have all those items in your pack.

If you had a mobile version of this with you, on the trail, you could just take a quick look at your smart phone and see if you brought a certain piece of gear instead of digging through your pack, and you could see which stuff sack you put it in too.

Appreciate the response; I'm a developer as well so I understand the inherent risks.

So, without going into too much detail and taking away from the tremendous amount of work that creating an app like this is, I'll say that it is important because most users will reuse a single password across all of their accounts online.

So, if their database was by any means leaked out, there's a nice little list of email addresses and password combinations that will work for a majority of other sites - including email accounts, private forums where sensitive data may exist, maybe some online banking apps, etc..

Also, if there's any possibility of untrusted user input being interpreted as code, well, you're doing something wrong.

Anyways - back to the topic at hand. Nesting items inside of others seems like it would introduce a fair amount of complexity both in terms of the UI as well as on the back end, but it'd be worth it if people would use it. I know I would, but whenever I browse other people's gear lists (typically spreadsheets), they're always just flat lists. However, that may just be because the spreadsheet format doesn't really make it easy to do stuff like that. Best to keep it simple in that case.

just found this thread! Just like you I've been tracking my gear with Excel and find it frustrating having to enter each detail and trying to think of those details as well. The calculator is really well done (love the background too) and I'd say is a pretty useful "guesstimator" for what any given pack might weigh.

For those who are "Meh!" because it doesn't list the actual weight of your particular gear, then enter that gear with it's weight (that you've actually weighed). I like it and will use it from now on. The spreadsheet I have now will be strictly for archival/tracking purposes. When I load out for a trip, it'll be the online weight converter.

Are you still working on this tool?

I couldn't find most of my stuff, albeit quite popular things (MSR Freelite tent, Petzl Reactik headlamp, my 40L Mammut Creon pro pack (which is 1450g vs the 1540g on the older 38L model) and other stuff.

If people still use this tool, I'll try and get all my gear listed there myself. If not,I guess I'll just do an excell too.

This thread originated seven years ago and has not been updated since then. Gear has gone through several generations since then, so finding recent gear on the list will be nearly impossible. Also, I think it is safe to say the member who posted it has long since stopped posting here.

Following the link shows the website is still up and has some activity. It looks like gear has been uploaded within the last two months. The website looks more refined than it was when it went live (around the time this thread was created). I remember fiddling around with it back then. I tried to log in but was unsuccessful. Even the password recovery didn't work. Perhaps I never made an account back then or they expunged my record in the intervening years. I would kind of like to see how this website has evolved, but in the intervening years I haven't heard of anyone using it.