GunplaDock
A Gunpla set is easy to buy twice. The boxes look alike, the names are long, and the one fact that is unique to a particular kit — the barcode under the bars — is the one nobody writes down. GunplaDock keeps it: what each set is, what its box looks like, what its barcode reads, and which ones are on your shelf.
You are standing in front of the shelf, holding the box.
That is the whole situation GunplaDock is built for, and it decides everything about it. The field takes focus the moment the screen opens, a USB or Bluetooth barcode scanner types into it without anybody touching a keyboard, and the answer is one set with two buttons on it — not a list to read.
A bandai box carries a 13-digit JAN in Japan and the same product carries a 12-digit UPC-A in North America. The two differ by exactly one leading zero, and GunplaDock matches across that difference — and says that it did, rather than pretending the two codes are the same.
What is in the dock.
The box, photographed
Two pictures per set: the box as it came off the shelf, and the model as it stands once it is built. A box is recognised by its picture long before its name is read, which is why the picture is what the dock leads with.
The barcode, and a check digit
The last digit of a UPC-A or an EAN-13 is a mod-10 sum over the rest. GunplaDock works it out as you type and tells you when it does not agree — because a mistyped barcode is a set that the Identify screen will never find, and nobody will ever notice.
Grades that mean something
Entry, SD, HG, RG, MG, MGEX, RE/100, Full Mechanics, PG, Hi-Resolution, no-grade and other — each with the scale it is actually made in. A 1/100 High Grade does not exist, so the app does not offer the combination.
A catalogue the collectors build
A public set joins a shared catalogue: its name, grade, barcode and photographs are readable by everybody who uses GunplaDock. One collector photographs a box once, and the next person holding it finds it. A private set is yours alone, in a bucket a signed-out browser cannot read at all.
A shelf, not just a list
Marking a set owned records what only you know: how many, whether the box is sealed or the model is built, where it lives, and what it cost. None of that is shared with anybody.
The arithmetic over the top
How many sets, how many boxes, how many still unopened, what the shelf cost, and a breakdown by grade — so “three sealed MG kits” is a sentence you can read off a screen.
Work with no connection
The catalogue and the shelf are cached on the device, and a change is a row that travels when the connection comes back. The sync merges by whichever change is later, so the phone in a drawer does not win an argument with the phone in your pocket.
Open it anywhere, install nothing
GunplaDock is a browser application. There is an Android build for the shop, where the camera scans the barcode for you, and the same account carries the same shelf to both.
What is shared, and what is not.
One account covers Arcanum, PopVault and GunplaDock. The data does not cross between them at all.
| What | Who can see it | Why |
|---|---|---|
| A public set | Everybody, signed in or not | A box photograph and a barcode are product information, and the collector in a shop deciding whether they already own it is who this is for |
| A private set | Only you | Its photographs go to a bucket a signed-out browser cannot read, and a signed-in one reaches only through a signed URL that expires |
| Your shelf | Only you | What you paid and where you keep things is nobody else’s business, and no other account can read a row of it |
| Arcanum, PopVault | Not GunplaDock | Three applications share a project as a shared doorway, not a shared room |
The starter list makes no claims it cannot back
A dock with nothing in it is a dock nobody uses, so GunplaDock ships a list of well-known kits — fifty-nine of them, with their names, grades, scales, series and product lines.
It deliberately contains no barcodes and no photographs. A JAN code is a fact that can be checked against the box in your hand and cannot be checked against a list somebody wrote from memory, and a plausible-looking wrong barcode is worse than an empty field: it makes the Identify screen confidently return the wrong kit, which is the one failure this application exists to prevent.
- Catalogue
- Shared, contributed by collectors, with barcodes read off real boxes
- Grades
- EG, SD, HG, RG, MG, MGEX, RE/100, FM, PG, HiRM, no-grade, other
- Runs in
- The browser — no install, no plugin — and on Android for the camera
- Account
- The same one as Arcanum and PopVault
GunplaDock is unofficial and non-commercial. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by or approved by Bandai Namco or any of its subsidiaries. “Gundam”, “Gunpla” and the grade names are the trademarks of their respective owners and are used here only to describe the products a collector owns.