Sasa
I had a dream! Taking notes in a smooth, centralized way, without accumulation and consequently losing dozens of scribbled pages. Combining those handwritten notes I take during a meeting, a debug, a study session, a tinkering process, with information from different sources: my phone, my computers, articles saved from my browsers and so on. Even notes about my weekly shopping list or admin deadlines! During all this time I oscillated back and forth on different approaches: bullet journal, lists, freestyle, kanban. For one reason or the other, after an initial period of infatuation, I’d eventually end up switching methods. For example, if I was going out for a meeting without carrying my bullet journal, I would be forced to use other pieces of paper and later on try to aggregate them. If I was writing about actionables (and in my way of taking notes, everything is an actionable), I would have to use Trello. But if for one reason or the other I could not access any of my apps, I would be screwed. What about if I had to share the note?
Let’s say that in 25 years of consciously taking notes, I’ve never found a system which truly works for me. But I have also realized that to effectively take notes, one should combine more than one approach, as the method and the medium you are using should be adapted to your approach and not vice versa.
I finally got a Rocketbook
For the last couple of years, due to all these reasons, I’ve had my eye on the products that Rocketbook has been making: a series of re-usable notebooks, that together with the companion app, allow the user to scan and digitize content, consequently sending said content to different, configurable destinations.
Sounds promising eh? Jumping on the excuse of buying one of these as a present for a friend, I purchased one for myself, hoping to find my pink, invisible unicorn.
I will spare you the review, because the net is full of them. More or less, they correspond to reality: the feel is good, but be careful not to smudge the ink! It’s really easy if you don’t let it dry for a few seconds.
Life is not thaaaat sweet
When it comes to the companion app, they could really improve the number of the destinations and maybe activate the OCR to all of them. I also feel that they should make a public API of sorts, and let the FOSS community take care of the task, because I understand that if a destination does not have enough friction, it won’t be implemented.
Here’s a list of all the the companion app flaws:
- Few destinations: I feel that more destinations should be accessible to the app. From a dev point of view it does not sound like a huge task;
- Proprietary software: yes, unfortunately it’s not FOSS! But I would surely love to spend time in developing plugins and extending what’s already there. As a nerd I have a lot of very specific needs!
- Despite the OCR feature being handled by the Rocketbook servers, as the disclaimer says, why isn’t it selectable for ALL the destinations?
- About OCR, why can I only choose to send the transcript together with the scan (PDF, JPG, GIF) and not the other way around? I might not want to send the scan to a destination, but only the transcript;
- The email templates cannot be changed. You will have to stick to the standard email Rocketbook sends, together with their signature. Nope, nope, nope!
For example, my original idea was to use it with Trello: taking physical notes with the Rocketbook and sending them to Trello, using this app as an aggregator for all my notes, creating cards with the OCR transcription.
Rocketbook and Trello, my workaround
Since we are living in the year 2023 (the month of May, to be exact), you cannot do it with a vanilla configuration. I almost returned it, but had second thoughts and decided to tinker a bit. I really love the idea behind the product, plus I needed to revisit my note-taking workflow!
Therefore I came up with my own simple, tailored system to make it possible. I am sharing it because I think it might be useful to someone else or be of inspiration to make something better or even more customized.
To make this possible, I use a few external tools that are really foolproof to configure. Moreover, you do not have to install anything and the system is also cross platform.
Talking about the meat, or the “nyama”, as some Kenyan friends of mine would say, this system uses a bit of automation, magic and patience. As I mentioned earlier, I use Trello as a main notes aggregator: I love the kanban approach to life, where everything flows, changes status, evolves and mutates.
To being able to send OCR to Trello, as you cannot to it directly, there is the need to configure the first automation using IFTTT:
- Create a folder on your Google Drive (which is supported by Rocketbook);
- Configure a Rocketbook destination using that folder on Google Drive;
- Access IFTTT and connect this applet, granting the access to your Google Drive;
- Configure the applet as you like.
Done! IFTTT Will only look out for the transcriptions, which are saved in “docx” format. Then, send it via API to the Trello’s board you’ve entered. With the IFTTT free tier, you only have 2 applets, so to rationalize I only use a Trello list called “Rocketbook” in a board that I’ve named “General”. In this way, the only operation left to do is to better sort the Inbox’s cards manually. You can always decide to use more replicas of that applet to configure more boards, more folders and more addresses. It’s up to you.
Why not use the Trello destination from Rocketbook? Because it’s too much: I will still receive the scan and the transcript, I will still have to access the attachments manually and last but not least the note will look ugly.
Kanban IRL with Post-It Android app
One of the sweetest discoveries of 2023 was the Post-It app: it allows you to play around with the notorious sticky notes, take a pic of the result and give you an interactive digital version of it, paired with OCR. And yes, you can send to result to Trello: it will create a board containing a list full of cards, representing your Post-It. It’s not FOSS, but it’s free. Yes, is not perfect, but again, is free of charge.
I found it very useful to create materials I.e. actionables to attach to some other automations (Github, for example) after a meeting. Of course this could open a new world of possibilities, not only in the dev world!
Put that code in Trello
I found the usage of an extension called Trello Viewer very effective to save snippets of code within my favourite IDE, VS Code. Basically it allows you to view your boards and manage lists and cards without leaving VS Code. This is especially useful when you studying something or you just want to save some code snippets in a safe space, to use them later. If you feel particularly nerdy, or you simply don’t need that extra “nguvu” or oompf, this could also be your choice to write more extended notes, without using the Trello’s interface.
No extension for the browser, just a “bookmarklet”
Apparently, a few months ago, Google removed the web clipper extension from the extension store. Have no fear! Trello came with a solution: a bookmarklet. Basically you add a bookmark, then whenever you want to send a page to Trello, you just click on the button and you are good.
Richer notes? Notejoy
Ok, Trello is cool, but it’s not really a note app. It’s more of a task management app. Sometimes you might need a bit more, especially if you are dealing with a richer text and the Trello Viewer extension is not enough.In my opinion you can use Notejoy, it’s beautifully integrated to Trello!
And the extra nerd sauce? NFC
Well, as you know me, I always take it a step further and add some unnecessary nerdy touches to everything. The top gamma Rocketbook, the Rocketbook Pro, comes with an NFC that interacts with your phone, starting the app by simply putting your phone next to the NFC area. Of course mine isn’t the top gamma, so no NFC. But nobody has forbidden me to add one. Those things are so cheap: I bought a pack of 12 NFC215 stickers for less than 8 euros! “Programming” it was incredibly easy, let me show you how I did it:
DISCLAIMER: In order to make these steps work, your phone should have NFC capabilities, otherwise you will not be able to write or read the NFC chip!
- You should download the NFC Tools app from Play Store;
- Once installed, go to the tab “Write”;
- Tap on “Add a Record”;
- Select “Application”;
- Type “com.rb.rocketbook” in the package name box;
- Tap “Ok”;
- The record should have a size of 35 bytes, tap on “Write”;
- Approach the NFC and wait for the writing process to succeed;
- Done. Stick the NFC wherever you prefer, mine is the inner back cover.
Now, every time your unlocked phone approaches the NFC zone, the Rocketbook app will pop up. No sweat!
Conclusions
Hopefully I have been able to give you an insightful overview of my personal way of taking notes, expounding on the tools and giving you a hint on the approaches. As usual, every part of this system can be modified, changed and used in a different way from what I am showcasing to you. I’d really wish I could use more FOSS tools for this particular and sensitive task, but I haven’t found any good FOSS alternative, so for this time we should just be happy with a FOSS approach to life.
As I’m trying to streamline my basic use case, I’ve found some other interesting ideas. So, there will surely be a part 2! In the meantime…
Happy building ⚒