School Electronics
Organizer System

Overview

The problem

Accumulating a working electronics inventory for coursework creates a practical challenge: components are small, visually similar, and easy to misplace or misidentify. Without a system, time gets wasted searching for parts, components get mixed together, and ESD-sensitive devices risk damage from improper handling.

I had a 61-item school electronics inventory sourced from Digi-Key — spanning ICs, transistors, diodes, passives, sensors, and connectors — and needed a solution that was fast to use at the bench, required no app or special equipment to look something up, and accounted for ESD handling requirements.

The goal was a complete system: physical organization, ESD protection, identification labels, and a digital reference accessible from any device within seconds.

Physical Design

Layout & ESD considerations

I selected a Store House Large Organizer (Harbor Freight item 56578) with adjustable dividers configurable from 4 to 24 compartments. I settled on a 3-column × 4-row grid — 12 compartments — which maps cleanly to the inventory categories and leaves logical groupings adjacent to each other.

ESD-sensitive components — all ICs, MOSFETs, and BJTs — required special handling. I lined the four ESD compartments (A1 through B1) with conductive ESD foam, secured with Scotch Mount Extreme double-sided tape after wiping the compartment bases with isopropyl alcohol to remove mold-release residue from the plastic. The foam prevents charge buildup and gives component leads a safe resting surface.

Groupings were chosen to mirror how components are used together in practice — op-amps alongside other amplifier ICs, rectifier diodes separate from Zener and Schottky types, electrolytic capacitors grouped with other passives in the C row. This reduces search time during lab builds.

Digital Reference

Building the web interface

A physical label on each compartment can only carry so much information. I wanted every component's full specs, package type, notes, and datasheet link available within a few seconds — without opening a spreadsheet or searching a vendor site.

I built a self-contained single-file HTML application with embedded JavaScript. The full 61-item inventory dataset — sourced directly from the Digi-Key order and cross-referenced against manufacturer datasheets — is embedded in the page as a JavaScript data structure. No server, no database, no API calls.

The site is hosted on Cloudflare Pages under a custom subdomain of my personal domain (schoolorganizer.warhorsefarms.me). Cloudflare automatically provisions HTTPS, serves from edge nodes globally, and requires zero ongoing maintenance — the deployed file is static HTML.

Label System

QR code labels

The connection between the physical organizer and the digital reference is a set of QR code labels — one per compartment. Each label encodes a direct deep-link URL to that compartment's entry in the web interface (e.g. schoolorganizer.warhorsefarms.me/#comp-A1), so scanning any label immediately opens that compartment's full component list on your phone.

Labels were designed at exactly 14mm × 40mm to fit the Nelko P21 thermal label printer's GAP paper. I generated the QR codes programmatically using Python's qrcode library and ReportLab, producing a print-ready PDF with one label per page at precise physical dimensions — no browser scaling required. Each label shows the compartment ID, category name, and a short parts list alongside the QR code.

ESD compartments (A1–B1) use an amber top bar to distinguish them visually at a glance, matching the color coding used in the web interface.

Outcome

Results

The completed system gives me instant access to any component's full specification at the bench — no digging through bags, no Googling part numbers. The ESD compartments protect the most vulnerable components from static discharge during every lab session.

The web reference also doubles as a reusable template — as the personal parts inventory grows, the same approach scales without any new infrastructure.