BrickTracker v1.3 - A Major Overhaul!
About a year ago, I released BrickTracker, my selfhosted solution for tracking LEGO collections and missing pieces. Since then, it was featured as a Content Spotlight in the selfh.st newsletter (which was honestly a huge deal for me personally). Thanks to all the feedback and suggestions from this community, I’m excited to share version 1.3, which is a big overhaul!
What’s BrickTracker?
For those who missed the original post: BrickTracker helps you manage your LEGO collection when you have multiple copies of sets, need to track missing/damaged pieces, and want everything stored locally. I built it because I reached 400+ sets and couldn’t find an existing tool that did what I needed. Read more here.
What’s New in v1.3?
Data Consolidation (Breaking Change)
The biggest change: all user data now lives in a single data/ folder. This makes Docker deployments way cleaner; one volume mount for everything (database, images, instructions, config). Migration guide is available, but your old setup will still work if you don’t want to migrate (you need to update your settings though!).
Dark Mode
Native dark mode support that you can toggle from the admin panel.
Statistics Dashboard
New statistics page showing:
- Collection metrics (total sets, unique sets, parts count)
- Financial overview (total cost, average price, etc.)
- Theme distribution with clickable drill-down
- Year-based analytics (release years and purchase years)
- Collection growth charts over time
Set Consolidation
If you have multiple copies of the same set, you can now group them together. Shows instance count badges and lets you expand to see each copy individually. Makes the sets page way less cluttered.
Live Settings Management
The admin panel got a big overhaul. You can now change settings on the fly without restarting the container or manually editing your .env file. Settings are organized into:
- Live settings (take effect immediately): menu visibility, table options, pagination, dark mode, etc.
- Static settings (need restart): API keys, database paths, authentication, etc.
All changes persist to your data/.env file automatically.
Better Mobile Support
Improved WebSocket reliability for mobile devices - switched to polling-first with automatic upgrade. No more socket connection drops when adding sets to your collection.
Parts Inventory Tracking
Added a “Checked” column to parts tables. Super handy when you’re physically sorting a set and want to mark parts as verified. Helps when rebuilding sets or doing inventory checks.
Pagination System
New server-side pagination option for sets, parts, minifigures, and problems. If you have a large collection like me, this makes pages load way faster. Each entity type can be configured independently with different page sizes for desktop and mobile.
Other Notable Features
- Spare parts control: Option to hide spare parts
- Peeron instructions: Alternative source when Rebrickable doesn’t have instructions
- BrickLink set links: Quick links to BrickLink catalog
- Alphanumeric set numbers: Support for sets with letters in numbers
- More filters: More options for filtering and sorting on all pages
- Performance improvements: Added strategic database indexes, SQLite optimization
Documentation Overhaul
Launched a new documentation site at BrickTracker.baerentsen.space with:
- Complete setup guides
- Migration instructions
- Configuration reference
- Screenshots and examples
Try It Out!
- Documentation: https://bricktracker.baerentsen.space
- Gitea: https://gitea.baerentsen.space/FrederikBaerentsen/BrickTracker
- Migration Guide: https://bricktracker.baerentsen.space/migration_guide
Read the whole release post on gitea and the full changelog
Note on Unraid
While BrickTracker works great in Docker, I don’t personally use or support Unraid. However, there is a community-maintained Unraid template available created by someone else. If you’re using Unraid and run into issues with the template, please reach out to the template maintainer rather than opening issues on the main project.
Important for v1.3: I haven’t tested the migration path on Unraid and don’t know how the new data consolidation changes will work with the Unraid template. If you’re on Unraid, you may want to wait for the template maintainer to update it before upgrading.
Huge thanks to everyone who provided feedback, bug reports, and feature suggestions over the past year. This community helped shape BrickTracker into something way better than what I originally built for myself.
If you try it out, I’d love to hear your feedback! And if you run into any issues, feel free to open an issue on Gitea or ask here.
Happy brick tracking!
This is still a hobby project built to solve my own LEGO organization problems. The code isn’t perfect (I’ve learned a lot about Python in the past year), but it works well for managing large collections. Currently managing 400+ sets with it!