Scan and Track Your Video Game Collection with Python

Hackster Staff
Aug 24, 2017 · 2 min read

If you’re a serious collector of console games, you may wonder what your stash is worth, or simply want to catalog them to keep track of what you have. If you’re to the point where you actually need a catalog system to keep everything straight, recording everything by hand could take a very long time.

Want to inventory your video game collection? Scan UPCs!

For this purpose, game enthusiast and YouTuber Ryan Bates employed a scanner to input each game’s UPC code with the push of a button. His setup — which runs on a Raspberry Pi 3, but could run on a normal PC — uses Python with the Beautiful Soup library in order to scrape data from pricecharting.com, giving him the game’s name, genera, release date, and price. Data can then be input into Excel to chart the collection to his heart’s content!

Check out the video seen here for a great explanation of the process. He notes that the software is a work-in-progress, but can make it available upon request.

Hackster Blog

Hackster.io, an Avnet community, is the world’s largest network for hardware & software developers. With 1 million members and 17,000+ projects, beginners and professionals can learn and share how to build robotics, industrial automation systems, AI-powered machines, and more.

)

Hackster Staff

Written by

Hackster Blog

Hackster.io, an Avnet community, is the world’s largest network for hardware & software developers. With 1 million members and 17,000+ projects, beginners and professionals can learn and share how to build robotics, industrial automation systems, AI-powered machines, and more.

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade