Dear All,
For a while, I was thinking to create a price comparison website, which will become your first place to look for a product instead of searching each LHS in India for that product.

At the outset, please note that it is not for money or for promoting my own LHS or any other.  However, I will be spending around 30 USD for a VPS and Amazon CDN service and I have made a provision so that you can contribute for this expense. Look in the footer of the website. You are free to use and it is not compulsory to contribute.

Please note that the website is a common and fair platform for every LHS in India. At any time if any of you or any LHS feels that I am doing some biased service, please feel free to raise it. Also, if any of the LHS do not want their product price listed in this website please message me.

I shared this idea of creating a price comparison website in this thread but I did not get any response from any LHS to this idea. The reason may be the disclaimer already in the first post of the thread.
http://www.rcindia.org/chatter-zone/do-we-need-a-price-comparison-website-for-rc-products-in-india/

Another member offered to create a similar website in this thread, but we have no updates from him.
http://www.rcindia.org/rc-general-topics/working-on-a-price-comparision-website-for-indian-rc-lovers/msg208891/#msg208891

So, I decided to do it now by myself and presenting here the website for your review.
http://www.rcspider.com

Please note that the site is under development and products are yet to be added.  Don’t click all the links and complain content is not there.

Here is few links to show you an idea how it look like.
Category page
http://www.rcspider.com/19-electric-motors

Product page
http://www.rcspider.com/brushless-motors/8-d2826-6-2200kv-outrunner-motor.html

Hobby Shops Location
http://www.rcspider.com/stores

I have the following ideas to improve the website, so please do not repeat it;
1. Show Six products per row instead of Current 4 in the home page.
2. Show Four products in row in other pages having right or left column.
3. On the product page push the out of stock shops price to the last in the list
4. Improve the logo and color scheme of the website. I request members to help me on this Logo design and color scheme since I am very poor in this area.
5. Choose a better domain name, if rcspider is not acceptable to members. Please suggest a different domain.
6. Create user privileges so that approved mods can login and add new products and prices.
7. Implement a price history system and show that in the product page.
8. Update the price and stock status by auto fetching from LHS website.

Please note that some of the above ideas or beyond my programming capabilities and I need some PHP programmer for the task 7 & 8
 
I request Hobbyshops to provide me their Geo Location (Lat & Lang from google maps) to include in the following map
http://www.rcspider.com/stores

I request members to give feedback on the website so that I can implement those before launch.

Regards

Kumaran

 

good initiative for hobbyist

kp

Hey nice work.
How are you pulling data from different sites, web scraping or something else?

This is our Product RSS feed: http://robu.in/shop/feed/
This is just for sample. If this works i will provide you detail feed.

If you require then i can even give access to robu.in rest api access for your site. If you require anything else i would gald to help.

Apart from this if you require any technical assistance feel free to contact me. I would be happy to help.

PS: I was thinking of this from long time. Good that you started.

Right now data is entered manually. I would like to give user rights to some volunteers to feed product data once product catalog is finalised.

If LHS align their SKU with each other (atleast for hobbyking products ) product feed system can be implemented.

Alternatively web scraping can be implemented if LHS does not raise any objection.

Thanks for the offer, will contact you when needed.

Yes , we have to search many lhs websites for a single product.
Like I am searching for Carbon Fiber Rods and Tubes.

I think there must be a website on which we can easily find sellers who are selling carbon fiber products.

Also there should be 3 subcategories of RC-:

1. RC electronic items. (Motors, ESC, battery, wires etc.)
2. RC tools. ( Nuts and bolts, vernier callipers, etc. )
3. RC building materials. ( Balsa wood, Carbon Fiber sheets and tubes).

Because some lhs call them rc stores but they only sell cars,planes and motors/ESC s for them.

Update :
Hobby Shops Location
Link changed to
http://www.rcspider.com/hobby-shops-in-India
Right now 16 Shops are listed in the map.

The following ideas were implemented
1. Show Six products per row instead of Current 4 in the home page.
2. Show Four products in row in other pages having right or left column.
3. On the product page push the out of stock shops price to the last in the comparison list

New improvement;
In the product page, on the comparison table, price difference from the listed lowest price is shown;
http://www.rcspider.com/lipo-batteries/34-turnigy-2200mah-3s-20c-lipo-pack.html

Further, developments
1. Include a price alert system on the product page. User can subscribe on the product page and when the price is changed they will receive an email about the change in price.
2. Get API Access from LHS Sites and update the price of the products and stock status.

I received some questions from members. Sharing it here for everyone's knowledge
1. Why only limited products added till now ?
There is an issue in the front end. Products are not showing when you click the brand logo at the bottom. I am working on that and hence products are not being added.

2. When I click something on the menu it takes me to some unrelated items.
Menus and categories are only partially added and hence this issue.

3. Why only vibranthobbies.com products are there ?
Since, I have access to this site, I can export and import products quickly to rcspider.

4. Why the site is slow ?
I have disabled all performance improvement features like caching, compressing, minifying etc hence this issue. Once, site is launched loading time will be reduced and also media will be served from CDN and you will have better experience.

Please share your feedback.

Kumaran

Great effort Kumaran! This will make product searching much more easier. Waiting for the fully functional site!!

Great effort sir

There is one more site like this for reference:
http://www.rcdetails.info/

If you require any help i can help you out.

BEAUTIFUL work.. well done..

it will make life for beginners easy...

refer the next post

Thanks meet2ami, RCNeil21 & sauravbhadauria

UPDATE :
The above issue is solved. Now, you can click the brand logo in the home page and all the products by that brand will be shown. For example;
http://www.rcspider.com/19_turnigy
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No one is helping for a better logo and color scheme. No problem. I am bad in this creative aspect, but at least I am good in copying something. Started working on a better color scheme. Please, don't complain it looks like some xyz site.
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Special Thanks to the following members who volunteered to spare their time in rcspider.com;
lhsfinder - for maintaining and updating the hobby-shops page
http://www.rcspider.com/hobby-shops-in-India

RCNeil21 - for adding products to the database.
Login permission with access rights to specific function has been given to the above members and they are on job.

Kumaran

Kuran / Neil

one more input to you, some LHS charge very exorbitant shipping, while they may beat other on price, they may make good with their shipping, for a Taraot 680pro frame i paid nearly 1500

I don't really know how are you going to incorporate that, some caution therefore could be added i guess, kind of disclaimer

Sir....I agree on the shipping.. I was charged 2500Rs for shipping by a lhs for a 40 size model. 

Seriously
And i try to get better prices from dtdc so that i can reduce the shipping
1500 for a tarot frame !!!

@rcpilotacro
Sir,
Hope you will not mind if I reply on behalf of Neil.
The disclaimer is added on the product page. Example
http://www.rcspider.com/for-airplanes/33-hobbyking-donkey-st2004-1550kv-brushless-motor.html

If LHS  publish their shipping charges in their website we could do something. An example of the published shipping rates
http://vibranthobbies.com/shipping
Please note the above reference is not for promoting vibranthobbies.

Kumaran

Thank you kumaran sir, gusty sir i am a noob in this regard

I am following kumaran sir and velan sirs instructions(only adding products). It would be great to have shipping rates displayed by all lhs.

It would also be great to have 12-15 members adding products to rcspider, we might be able to cover all products in 20 reputed lhs inside 3 months time. Then only keep on updating and adding new lhs

If you have to manually do it for all products, it's an involved job, once your career takes off, when you fly away to USA or something !! this could die its natural death ! if you keep it as a community affair ! i guess it could work ! if adding Google adsense prolly it could self sustain ! i doubt it though !!
all the best

My bad Kumaran ! thought it was Neil doing the product adding job ! accept my apologies

PS
Kumaran and Velan ! both are names of Murugan !! good names ! i had initially named my son Karthik, his great grand mother changed it to Vineet

There is something wrong with the website. I am not able to open it.

Sorry, see the next post

Yes there was some interruption due to caching of media files to the cdn server.

Update:
I have completed the visual look of rcspider.
Also, media files (images+JS+css) are being served from Amazon Web Services CDN.
Now, rcspider will load faster. Share your opinion.
Ctrl+F5 if the apperance looks erratic.
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I want to share you the capability of rcspider.
See the link below which is filtered to show 2200mAh 3S batteries.
http://www.rcspider.com/116-batteries#/batteries_by_capacity-2200_mah/batteries_by_voltage-3s_111_volts
You can see 14 batteries of different discharge rating. So, apart from showing comparitive price of individual products, you can also compare the price of similar items. Needless to say that there is a quality difference.
But, you need not visit all websites to find out who has what.
Thanks to Neil for adding all those batteries. He is working on adding each set of batteries of similar capacities from all LHS.
If we have missed some LHS, please message us so that we can include it.
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Also thanks to rcrcnitesh. He volunteered to add motors from the LHS
---

Now, I have started working on completing the menu and will start programming auto updating of price and stock status. I need support from the LHS. I will contact them once the programming is ready.
----

Attn to LHS
The home page slider is free space for your promotions. You can send me a slide related to special offers, discount sales, new product launch etc. and it will be shown to the period as specified by you.
However, it will be limited to 1 slide per LHS and 4 slides at a time to avoid slow loading.


Kumaran

Sir I really like the idea of your website. It is much better than any other price comparison website I have seen. I am actually happy that I can be a part of such a nice project. Thank you for the website and for accepting me as an admin.

Thanks Nitesh.
But, it seems that no one is interested other than few of us.