  >> I have wasted a significant chunk of my life counting out small numbers of parts into bags and posting them to people.

So, small parts like this are always counted by weight, and I'm wondering why you would spend so much time on a counting solution when "buy a scale" is right there.

▲ jstanley 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

He's counting out like 6 at a time. He needs a fast way to pick small quantities precisely, not a fast way to check large quantities. Once they're picked they're easily verified by eye.

▲ bravoetch 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yes it's by weight when you need exactly 20k tiny screws in a box. But when you need six that won't save you any time.

▲ kamaal 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Until counting machines got ubiquitous, banks in India would count notes/bills by weight as well.

It wasn't very precise but you could move a lot of money in ball park with this method. Atleast internally across branches.

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ghshephard 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Up to roughly 100 bills it's pretty much bang on - even with a cheap $10 scale (American Weigh Scales Digital Pocket Scale has a bunch of different options). Each bill weights roughly 1 gram. So - accurate to within 1% - and presumably the banks have better scales.

	▲	eru 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I suspect at scale (moving either a lot of batches or large batches), you also need to take variance into account more. Some bills might be dirty or have stuff stuck to them, some bills might be damaged and have bits missing? And other things that occur in practice that I can't think of from the comfort of my armchair in 30s.