Surplus Pilot

How it works

A bin of surplus, photographed into listings you approve.

Four photographs a part. The typing, the part number, the specification and the price come back filled in. Nothing reaches eBay until you say so.

Four photographs, one part.

The same walk down the row you already do, with the typing taken out. About forty seconds a part, most of it holding a phone.

  1. Step 1

    Aim at the plate

    The phone grades its own focus, its glare and whether there is text in frame at all, then waits for a sharp one. It captures a burst and keeps the sharpest frame rather than whichever one your thumb landed on.

    It will not fire at the bench, the floor or your hand.

  2. Step 2

    It argues with itself

    A reader on the phone goes first, for nothing. What it reads is checked against part numbers manufacturers have actually printed, which is what settles whether a string is the part number, the UL file or the wiring diagram reference.

    Eleven parts in twenty-one never leave the phone. Only the ones in doubt cost anything.

  3. Step 3

    Three more shots

    Front, condition, detail. Or hand it two hundred photographs from a morning in a storage unit and it groups them into parts itself, so you are not matching pictures to rows afterwards.

    Backgrounds come out white without a lightbox.

  4. Step 4

    You approve it

    Title, description, condition grade, photographs and a price come back filled in. The price arrives with the range around it and whatever is wrong with the evidence, because a number on its own is not information.

    Edit anything. It never publishes on its own.

What it will not do.

Captures with no signal at all, too — a day of work in a metal building is the thing we are least willing to lose.

  • Certify a part

    Not genuine, not safe, not tested, not UL‑listed. What you warrant to a buyer stays yours.

  • Publish for you

    Every listing passes a person. That is a design decision, not a missing feature.

  • Guess a part number

    If the catalogue does not recognise it, you get a refusal with a reason attached.

  • Sell your data

    Your photographs, part numbers and corrections are yours. We do not sell a profile of you either.

And it tells you when it cannot read the plate.

Every other tool always has an answer. Turn a nameplate ninety degrees and a model returns a different part number — same confidence, same certain tone. We measured three runs of one photograph and got three answers.

ready to review

ED63B100

Square D · 3‑pole 100 A moulded case breaker

Read from
the nameplate, by the local reader
Catalogue
matched · 2 independent dealers
Confidence
0.88
no identification

—

Nothing on this plate matches a known part number.

Read from
4 orientations, all tried
Catalogue
no match for any legible string
Needs
a readable number — retake the plate filling the frame

Both are real output. The second one is the feature. A string nobody has ever printed is not a part number, however confident anything sounds.

Your next bin of surplus is a good place to start.

Free trial when it opens, no card.

Start free trial See pricing