[Lfm] flyRoom — a stock management tool for the fly community

[Gilestro, Giorgio F]

Dear LFM fellows,
I wanted to reach out about something I've been building that I think could be genuinely useful for our community: flyRoom https://www.flyroom.net
flyRoom is a web application for managing Drosophila stocks. It grew out of my own lab's need for a modern, reliable system to keep track of our collection, plan crosses, and stay on top of vial maintenance — the sort of thing we all struggle with using spreadsheets or ageing FileMaker databases.
What it does:

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Low barrier to entry — import your existing stock list from a CSV or Excel file in minutes. Download a template, fill it in (or adapt your current spreadsheet), and bulk-import your entire collection in one go.
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Multi-user — each lab member gets their own account, with role-based permissions (admin and user). Everyone receives their own personalised email reminders about stocks that need flipping and virgins that need collecting, so responsibilities are clear and nothing falls through the cracks.
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Stock management — once your stocks are in, you get full-text search across genotypes, notes, and any field; a flexible tagging system with custom colours for easy filtering; and soft delete so nothing is ever lost by accident.
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FlyBase integration — search 188,000+ stocks across seven major stock centres (Bloomington, VDRC, Kyoto, NIG-Fly, KDRC, FlyORF, NDSSC) and import them directly into your collection with one click. Genotypes, FlyBase IDs, and source URLs are pulled in automatically.
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Cross planning — a step-by-step wizard to select parents, define outcome type (ephemeral, intermediate, or new stock), set your timeline, and review before committing. Crosses are tracked through their full lifecycle — planned, in progress, completed or failed — with automatic placeholder stock creation for offspring and AI-assisted genotype predictions.
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Flip tracking and reminders — a maintenance dashboard shows which stocks need flipping, sorted by urgency. Set your lab's own warning and critical thresholds, and receive weekly email digests so nothing gets missed. Flips are logged with one click, or automatically when you print a label.
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Label printing — generate QR codes and barcodes for vial labelling, with configurable label formats. Scan a code to jump straight to that stock's page. No more messy labels with messy handwriting (guilty as charged for that one).
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Email notifications — automated reminders for cross milestones (flip days, virgin collections), weekly maintenance digests, and stock request updates.
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Mobile-friendly — it's web based so you don't need a fancy computer to use this. Any old computer or tablet will do.

Stock requests:
One feature I'm especially keen to highlight is the stock request system. You control exactly who can see your stocks, with three levels of visibility:

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Public — visible to all flyRoom users worldwide
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Organisation — visible only to labs within your university or institution
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Collaborators only — visible only to specific labs you've marked as collaborators

Other labs can browse the stocks you've chosen to share and request them directly through the platform. Requests are batched, and the owning lab receives email notifications with all the details. For a community like ours in London and across the UK, where we're often shipping stocks to each other anyway, this could save a lot of back-and-forth emails and make it much easier to find what's already available locally before ordering from stock centres abroad (Note: of course this saves time and money  to us, but at the same time may affect revenue for the stock centres so I am thinking to offset some resources to redirect towards BDSC, VDRC, and of course flyBase if the system picks up - suggestions welcome)
On pricing:
There is a free tier (up to 200 stocks, 2 users) that is perfectly functional for smaller collections. Paid plans are geared towards different type of funding we may have at any given time. That said — I know the funding landscape is not easy at the moment so if your lab is interested but budget is tight, please just get in touch. I am very happy to work something out. The goal is to make this useful and accessible, not to price anyone out. The first three months are free for everyone on the largest plan so you have lots time to test the system anyway.
I am not going to send any more messages about this so if you want to hear about future progresses I'd recommend you follow the flyroom blue sky account<https://bsky.app/profile/flyroom.net>.

If you find this useful, please circulate it with your collaborators.

Thanks a lot!
Giorgio



For those who care: every service flyroom uses runs on EU/UK server: Germany for hosting, France for AI, UK for data backup and payment collection.

--
Giorgio F. Gilestro
Associate Professor in Systems Neurobiology
Department of Life Sciences
Imperial College London

lab webpage<https://lab.gilest.ro/> | vCard<https://lab.gilest.ro/card/> | find us<https://lab.gilest.ro/address/>
bsky<https://bsky.app/profile/giorgio.gilest.ro> | mastodon<https://drosophila.social/@giorgiogilestro> | twitter




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