New Backpacking / Hiking Weight Calculator App

[Josh J]

Just updated, thanks!

[Josh J]

Hey Mike,

A few more bugs\suggestions.

In gear locker when adding new items if you’re pack is set to oz, I add the weight but when it saves it changes the weight to something way off.

A suggestion is you can have pack in lb and oz, be nice to be able to add to gear locker in lb and oz.

 

Thanks again for the hard work

[Mike J]

Josh,

 

In gear locker when adding new items if you’re pack is set to oz, I add the weight but when it saves it changes the weight to something way off.

Good catch, thats another bug. Just fixed. About to upload again ;-)

A suggestion is you can have pack in lb and oz, be nice to be able to add to gear locker in lb and oz.

Not sure I fully understand this statement. No matter what your weight settings are in you are able to choose any weight format when adding a gear to your gear locker. Clearly not working right based on the bug above, but should be fixed once both app stores approve.

Packaging up the app and uploading to the app stores right now…

[Mike J]

And Android update now live, waiting in iPhone approval processes still.

[Josh J]

Mike,

In the settings for pack you have an option showing lbs and oz

But when adding to gear locker you only have lb or oz but not option to add lb AND oz. For example say something weighs 3lb 6oz. You have to enter 54oz or 3.375lbs not 3lb 6oz

 

[Mike J]

Josh,

Thanks for the clarifications that makes sense now. I will add that to the ‘investigate’ list. It’s not impossible to add but there is a lot of user checking and user interface things that I need to ponder before attempting that.

I got a few other priority things I will probably work on before that though.

Hope the bug fixes last night fixed your last issue :-)

[Josh J]

No worries, wasn’t sure how easy it would be. And yes the fixes helped!

[Josh J]

food for thought. If you have 2 pairs of socks, one on your body and another in your pack, there isn’t a good option I’m seeing right now to separate the weight between base weight and worn weight.

[JCH]

Downloaded last night and am investigating this app.  Looks promising.

TBH, I have never been concerned with “skin out” weight.  The weight of what I’m wearing has nothing to do with my pack weight, which is what I am interested in managing.  There are advantages to keeping an app simple, and I would vote for a simple PACK weight app.

Just my opinion.

[Josh J]

Not to concerned with it either but just keep in mind what is on the body is also translated to pack weight to a degree. Think about wearing 3lb boots vs 11oz trail runners….

[JCH]

Acknowledge your point, but will argue that worn weight is a different optimization.

[Mike J]

Yea the whole worn weight, skin on weight, pack weight is an interesting discussion. There are a lot of different opinions on this when I was researching.

I just tried to keep it simple to pack weight is everything in your pack, on your back. I do know some want to know total weight of everything and its gets a little odd on big trips or cold trips when layers are coming on and off depending on the time of day and weather. I do still have total weight on the second card at the top when viewing a pack.

Good point on if you have two pairs of socks I dont have a a good way to split which ones are worn and which ones are in your pack… Need to ponder on that implementation a bit. Requests like that are never hard tp implement on paper, but when trying to keep the user interface simple as well it always becomes an interesting problem to think about…

[JCH]

Good point on if you have two pairs of socks I dont have a a good way to split which ones are worn and which ones are in your pack… Need to ponder on that implementation a bit.

This speaks to my point.  You either have to figure out how to add multiple instances of the same object, one marked “packed” and one marked “worn”…or artificially create multiples of the same object in the gear locker.  Example: “Socks (worn)” and “Socks (packed)”.  I’ve never actually seen an implementation of a good solution to this issue in an app.

A suggestion on another subject:  It would be very valuable to make the “packed/unpacked” state of an object, i.e. marking it off as have been placed in the backpack, a simple checkbox in the pack contents listing. Also a way to mark everything ”unpacked”…resetting the packed state globally so the pack list can be reused. It’s very click-intensive to open each item in the pack and mark it “packed” (or “unpacked”). Without this change it’s very hard to re-use the pack list for the next trip.

[Mike J]

It’s very click-intensive to open each item in the pack and mark it “packed” (or “unpacked”). Without this change it’s very hard to re-use the pack list for the next trip.

So fun tip, which makes this a lot easier is, if you swipe right on an item in your pack it auto marks it as packed. Swipe left and it un-packs the item ;-)

 

I need to work on a tutorial or onboarding soon, been working on smoothing out and fixing things. Maybe I will had a quick “Help/tip” section in the settings as a hold over…

A un-pack all button is needed and already on my todo list. Since it’s been a few hours and Josh hasn’t found any more bugs that may be one of the things I had this week lol

[Josh J]

im my excel sheet I created multiple items for worn and packed, it worked

[JCH]

So fun tip, which makes this a lot easier is, if you swipe right on an item in your pack it auto marks it as packed. Swipe left and it un-packs the item ;-)

sure enough…that little nugget of UI knowledge does make using the app much easier mj

 

[Mike J]

sure enough…that little nugget of UI knowledge does make using the app much easier mj

Glad it was helpful!

 

Also any iPhone users out there, all the bug fixes are now officially live for the iPhone as well :-)

[Josh J]

So …

Gear locker:

Sorting feature even by alphabetical would be good and I think I mentioned by categories.

Pack

When adding items having gear grouped by categories would be helpful so not scrolling through the entire list.

When something is listed as food or meal automatic checked as consumable

Grouping of items in pack well just for organizing while packing ect

Just a few more ideas , maybe I’m just anal…. Or me being an engineer……

Otherwise it’s coming along nicely

[Mike J]

Gear locker:

Sorting feature even by alphabetical would be good and I think I mentioned by categories.

The Gear Locker defaults to Alphabetically sorted. Is that not so for you? I do need to add a way to sort by weight as well. As for categories, that is coming soon and will be similar to the Pack which I will explain more answering your next suggestion.

Pack

When adding items having gear grouped by categories would be helpful so not scrolling through the entire list.

When something is listed as food or meal automatic checked as consumable

Grouping of items in pack well just for organizing while packing ect

Since I don’t have a tutorial yet you probably missed this feature which may help with the grouping by categories, manufacturer, base weight, consumable etc.

There are two main ways to sort the list. The first is the “Search Filter” which you can activate by clicking the search icon on the top bar, which I highlighted in yellow in the image above. With that you can type and filter the list by name, manufacturer, item type etc.

The second is a quick sort based on the bar graphs. Taping any bar graph with instantly sort your list view below. For example if you tap “Hydration” in my example image above it will filter the list to only the “Hydration” items. This is a the quick way to group by pack category. Once you tap the bar graph it auto types it into the search bar to instantly filter:

I use this feature all the time when I am packing my bag or adding items to make sure I am not forgetting any food, shelter or electronics etc.

This one tap grouping filter works on the other cards as well. So you can tap on “Base Weight”, “Consumable Weight”, “Worn Weight” etc. It also works on the manufacturer graph as well.

Hopefully that helps with all your grouping needs :-)

I really like the idea of auto adding “Meals” and “Snacks” as consumable.

[Josh J]

Ohh that tapping and swiping are sweet! Didn’t know thanks!

Not really….

[Mike J]

Josh,

So I was wracking my brain on why your gear locker was not alphabetically ordered, and mine was….then my wife casually glanced over and noticed that you have words that start with lower and upper case letters…

Looks like its order by uppercase then lower case for you… I do have a todo list item to auto Uppercase the first letter of each word for each item, which will probably fix it in the future. But thats the science to what’s going on for you.

[Josh J]

Lol, never noticed.

Btw search feature in gear locker on mine searches for everything but pack categories

[Mike J]

Btw search feature in gear locker on mine searches for everything but pack categories

I will fix that next push, thats one line of code. Been a little foggy, just getting over covid this week.

[Josh J]

No worries, ugh! Hope your feeling better

[Jacob]

For worn vs pack weight I would generalize the feature to create the option to add and name new ‘pack states’, maybe call them ‘load-outs’? That way people can mark packed, unpacked, or worn/carried, for various load outs with the same pack-list so they can better manage gear weight when setting up base camps, dropping gear for summit pushes, or making multiple trips from the trailhead.

[Author]

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