The first server and a web app for your collection
Before any hardware, the project needed a brain: something that keeps track of your cards and fetches their prices. The first version came together the same evening as the idea.
What it did
- A small server that runs in a Docker container, so it can live on any machine at home or in the cloud.
- A web page to manage your collection. Search for a card, click it to add it, then set the condition, quantity, and printing.
- A settings page for the Scrydex connection, where the API key and team ID go.
- Code for the display itself, written first for a Raspberry Pi, which would pull the pages from the server and draw them on the LED panel.
Prices are fetched in batches. Scrydex charges one credit per request, and a request can return up to 100 cards, so the server groups cards together instead of asking about them one at a time. That choice stuck, and it's why refreshing a big collection still costs very little.
The rest of the week was about making this first version something other people could use.