Initiating an attribute in a class __init__: question

[billykid999]

When I write my below code everything works fine:

class HardwareMaintenance:
    info_dict = dict()
    def __init__(self):
        pass
    def hardware_handler(ConnectHandler, ip=None, self=None):
            #info_dict = HardwareMaintenance.info_dict
            info_dict = HardwareMaintenance.info_dict
            info_dict[ip] = []

            if ConnectHandler.device_type == "cisco_ios":

I would like to pass info_dict into the __init__ method of the class, however when i reference it inside the hardware_handler function using this method it return a Nonetype:

class HardwareMaintenance:

    def __init__(self):
        self.info_dict = dict()
    def hardware_handler(ConnectHandler, ip=None, self=None):
            #info_dict = self.info_dict
            info_dict = self.info_dict
            info_dict[ip] = []

Is there a way where I can initialize info_dict through the __init__ method and call it in my function? Down the line I may inherit the HardwareMaintenance class, and so I would like to have this option of an auto generate dictionary when i do inheritance.