Top all-time · #12480
PartsBox Blog
Company blog · partsbox.com/blog · on HN as jwrhardware
PartsBox Blog is the company blog at partsbox.com, writing about hardware. Since 2020, 6 different Hacker News readers have linked it 19 times, most often “Vintage HP-25 Calculator Gets Wireless Charging”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-03-27, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (2) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Commenters describe PartsBox as an app for electronic parts inventory and production, and link a post about adding wireless charging to a vintage HP-25 calculator. No comment judges the writing.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 2 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Vintage HP-25 Calculator Gets Wireless Charging5 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2021-05-10
- /2 people · 11 mentions · first linked 2020-03-25
What Hacker News says?
I have an app which isn't offline, but I wanted to make use of IndexedDB and LocalStorage to make things faster for users. Now I wonder if it's worth the effort to even try. I think this pretty much kills the utility of all local storage initiatives. My app is an inventory control system used by businesses that build electronics ( https://partsbox.com/ ). Deleting client-side data after 7 days is ridiculous. You can…
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on “Private client-side-only PWAs are hard, but now Apple made them impossible”Submitted Vintage HP-25 Calculator Gets Wireless Charging as a story · 55 points
HN discussionI am the founder of a niche SaaS ( https://partsbox.com/ — software for managing electronic parts inventory and production). While I am somewhat worried about AI capabilities, I'm not losing too much sleep over it. The worry is that customers who do not realize the full depth of the problem will implement their own app using AI. But that happens today, too: people use spreadsheets to manage their electronic parts (p…
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on “AI agents are starting to eat SaaS”Submitted Most popular hobby electronic parts as a story · 4 points
HN discussion> I can count the times I've needed WebUSB or WebSerial on one hand There are many things that would be possible with WebUSB that current browsers make impossible. My personal example is label printers: I would love for my SaaS app (PartsBox, https://partsbox.com/ ) to be able to print labels, but there is no way to access a printer from a browser other than through the "Print…" dialog, which is no good if you need…
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on “I-cant-believe-its-not-webusb: Hacking around lack of WebUSB support in Firefox”Submitted Weekend hacking: wireless charging for a HP-25 calculator as a story · 4 points
HN discussionIt's a PLM/ERP type app for electronics — https://partsbox.com/ Drawbacks, hmm — I'm not sure, really, there is no silver bullet, and I can't see significant problems with the language itself that another language would magically solve. I'm pretty happy with Clojure and ClojureScript and some advantages are hard to replicate elsewhere (such as business logic code being written only once and then shared between Cloju…
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on “Idiomatic Clojure without sacrificing performance”Submitted Weekend hacking: wireless charging for a HP-25 calculator as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI earn a living from my SaaS. I am a solo founder, responsible for everything. I wrote all the code. My customers pay subscription fees because the software makes their work easier (it's a B2B SaaS, https://partsbox.com/ ). Bugs are solely my responsibility: there is no one else to blame. And bugs mean that my customers paid money for a product which did not work as intended (certainly not as I intended it to work).…
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on “I’ve made a conscious effort to stop apologizing for bugs in my code”> It was actually a bit depressing to see how much stuff is available, just not available in the US One reason for this is strict regulations. U.S. FDA Title 21 CFR Part 11 is very strict as to what a medical device company needs to do, and it's not easy to meet those requirements. Most people do not realize that even in the early startup stage, if you build something that is a medical device, there are rules to fol…
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on “Cuffless device delivers clinically accurate blood pressure measurements”Perhaps the link should be replaced with the original post? https://partsbox.com/blog/wireless-charging-for-a-hp-25-calc...
Comment linking /blog/wireless-charging-for-a-hp-25-calculator-05-2021.html
on “Vintage HP-25 Calculator Gets Wireless Charging”SEEKING FREELANCER — UTC±3 Looking for someone knowledgeable with CSS to fix issues with CSS in PartsBox ( https://partsbox.com/ ) and make the app display reasonably correctly on small screens, across all browsers. In the longer term, there is plenty of work with fixes to Semantic UI (which the app uses). Knowledge of React is highly recommended, although you won't be writing much code unless you know ClojureScript…
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on “Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (February 2021)”Ok, so this shows how bad I am at marketing. I forgot to mention my own service, if you are building electronics: PartsBox, https://partsbox.com/ (insert facepalm emoji here)
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on “Migrating to the EU”Oh, I think I have a good one. I had an HP-25 calculator as old as myself, and couldn't use it. The original battery pack contained two sealed NiCd cells, which obviously failed many years ago. Most people replaced their NiCd cells with new ones, then with NiMh cells, or even alkaline AA batteries. This was always problematic: newer batteries were slightly larger and never fit well. Also, the power consumption of a…
Comment linking /blog/wireless-charging-for-a-hp-25-calculator-05-2021.html
on “Ask HN: Most interesting tech you built for just yourself?”Beautiful. I'm glad the art of calculators isn't entirely lost and that people still appreciate how well designed these machines were. As a kind of "me too", I'll shamelessly plug my own pet project, which shows how much I value a device that is older than me: https://partsbox.com/blog/wireless-charging-for-a-hp-25-calc...
Comment linking /blog/wireless-charging-for-a-hp-25-calculator-05-2021.html
on “HP 45 (and 35 and 80) Calculator Emulator”PartsBox https://partsbox.com/ — an app that lets you take control of electronic parts inventory and electronics production.
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on “(Next Rich)”I find it sad that the knowledge of how to use calculators has declined, and as a result there is less market need for them, so they get discontinued (especially the good ones). I find a good engineering calculator indispensable. The HP-15C is a really great one, although I usually prefer to use a much older HP-25 — it has most of the functions I need, and it can be used single-handed, which is a Big Deal. I even de…
Comment linking /blog/wireless-charging-for-a-hp-25-calculator-05-2021.html
on “Hewlett Packard HP-15C Simulator”Simple sites :-) https://partsbox.com/ — it's an ERP/MRP for companies building electronics. Around 170k lines of Clojure and ClojureScript.
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on “Mythical Man Month”PartsBox founder here. I get asked about this sometimes, so I'll answer here: I'm quite happy with open-source solutions appearing in the same problem space. I bought ECDB, but left the open-source software available on GitHub for anyone who wishes to take it further. My software will not be open-source for a number of reasons, most importantly I cannot afford to take on the chores of a project leader/maintainer. Th…
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on “Part-DB: open-source inventory management system for your electronic components”
