Making Instant Ramen A Bit More Instant

Instant ramen, the favoured repast of the impecunious would-be tech genius! It’s cheap, of dubious nutritional value, and it only takes a minute to cook. But what if you are in the creative Zone to the extent that five minutes to boil water is too much? For that you need an automatic ramen cooker, which is what [Mayermakes] has created from an upcycled electric filter coffee maker.

A filter coffee maker is a surprisingly effective instant ramen cooker without modification, in that it already contains a hotplate and water boiler to dribble hot water on some noodles. But it lacks any means of adding the seasoning or the essential hot sauce, so he created a 3D-printed rotating hopper driven by a stepper motor, and a servo driven syringe, while coffee maker itself is given a solid state relay to switch it on.

Controlling the show is an Arduino MKR board, which serves up a web interface with the option of ramen as it comes, or ramen with hot sauce. The result is an automated pot of $0.49 noodles that will set no gourmet’s heart a-flutter. Then again, fine dining is not why instant ramen exists.

This appears to be our first ramen-cooking coffee pot, but we have seen a guitar made from noodles!

32 thoughts on “Making Instant Ramen A Bit More Instant

  1. ” But what if you are in the creative Zone to the extent that five minutes to boil water is too much?”

    Thought Brits had higher voltage tea kettles? *something* *something* National beverage of a nation. *something*

    1. Yeah, 5 minutes to boil a kettle of seems rather long for a typical U.K. 3KW kettle. Though a friend of mine with solar panels uses a low powered travel kettle on sunny days to stay within the electricity he’s generating, due to the odd pricing under the feed-in tariff (you’re paid for electricity you generate, even if you use it…!).

      But getting up even for a minute or two can break focus, so I suspect 5 mins is an exaggeration and it’s more about not getting up and having to think about the kettle.

  2. They do. The rest of the world except Canada doesn’t have electric kettles, which are so much faster than one of those ceramic electric cooktops. I hacked a pod coffee maker to use a Melita cone and make a single great cup without those expensive DRM’ed pods.

  3. Typical Ramen require 300-400ml of water. In a typical electric kettle with 2kW that takes less time to boil than I need to open the various packs of seasonings, oil and spices.
    So the problem described in the article does not really exist.

    1. it is not about how long it takes,but that you have to stop doing what you are currently do. So you fill up the machine whenever you have time(in the morning for example) and when you get hungry , you activate it over the network.
      when it is ready you grab the bowl and eat while working on.
      And for r/woosh the focus of the project is to show network interfaces and simple motion control with arduino, and to spark viewers try out their own ideas, not deliver a meaningfull project. thats the joy of hacking>/making it does nto have to make sense, it hast to be fun for the person that builds it!

      1. you have to stop anyway if you want to eat properly. Get some dishes, a drink, cutlery, maybe some dessert. Cooking the noodles is a painless unattended step in the process than can be done in parallel with other tasks.

        1. It seems that the concept of doing something for fun is to abstract for a lot of people. Fun does not have to make sense, be commercial viable or economical it is just having fun with rle tonics and sharing knowledge with others.

          1. I’d rather go hungry a little longer, than eat Ramon noodles, least the cheep dried kind. I read the article, because it sounded like a cool use of things lying around, to do a repetitive task. I would considered the noodles, but the same setup could be used in many ways, or even just parts of it. Pretty cool he shared the files as well.

            I’d really like to see some of the projects, the naysayers have built, or working on. HAD sometimes really has to scrap the bottom of the barrel at times for content. I’m sure they would be thrill to see all those practical, an commercially viable projects.

            It’s not encouraging to anyone, to post negative crap about other peoples work. Some people are sensitive, and they might have other interesting things, they are less willing to share in the future, not to mention other readers, wishing to avoid the abuse. Hacking isn’t about designing commercial projects, that’s what jobs are for. Hacking is for personal gratification, occasionally, it turns into profit. If you cant gratify, keep it too yourself.

  4. Am I the only one who puts the ramen brick into a bowl of water and just microwaves the whole thing? Takes about a minute and a half in my microwave.
    You can even crack an egg straight into the bowl with some frozen veggies for nutrition. It’s not great, but it’s food.

    1. Not as fun as this project but yup that the procedure. When to add egg and stir another factor. Veggies take more time if frozen. Canned veggies faster. Usually dont use all of it so leftover storage issue.
      Used quite a bit of expensive hardware on this one. I guess Mayer Makes not an ESP fan. Quiet stepper stick driver really not needed. Only thing cheap was old coffee maker. Watts is Watts 120V or 230-240V and why brought up is a mystery given common coffee maker. Most likely less than 1600Watts.
      Is not a proper Goldberg. Have to measure water and prep too much.
      Should be able to stack Ramen in 4 place queu. One for each major flavor: chicken , beef, pork, veggie. There are others but at least four choices selectable and replace as taste demands. Be nice if the flavor packet was seperated already. Cant leave noodles exposed. They tend to be easily contaminated by whatever may be in the atmosphere if exposed too long. Package should be cut open and brick of noodles placed. If I have to be there to prep all of it and wash my hands to handle food dont see the point of wifi or app. Logistics and detail demons.
      Expecting more from Element 14 crowd. Snicker.

  5. I used to eat a lot of lentils. (Back when they were cheap) Trouble is, I kept forgetting them, until they burned! Then I found a solution. I made them in a percolator pot! (without the riser &c) Not sure how it worked exactly. better rolling boil or I just remembered to check more often, but it did work.

  6. Here is reality: constructive play is nothing less than learning without consequence. It’s exploring new ideas without needing to worry about your boss breathing down your neck or deadlines. It’s deliberately doing something that you knowwill fail, but you do it anyway because you will learn something you don’t know. It’s gathering bits of information and new techniques in the most enjoyable way possible, driven by the sheer exuberance of having a stress-free goal that will satisfy at least you.

    …or you can live the monotonous life of a salaryman 24/7 and be dead long before you finally are allowed to rest in your grave. Whichever.

  7. I am now imagining a hopper-fed Pot Noodle ™ machine rather like the pod coffee makers. It needs a hypodermic needle to pierce the top and inject the boiling water, and not a lot else unless you want to actually stir it. Then it gets more complicated, probably all the way up to a vision system to locate and pick out the sachet of seasoning. (where included)

  8. Not faster. When I read faster noodles. I wanted to see them cooked with a neutron beam or fusion reactor, in under 3.5 seconds. Anything less is just a sad attempt at click bait. I want the 10c you made from my click refunded.

  9. few years ago I added a “Instant” hot water tap to my shop sink – near endless super hot water, top the ramen and 3 minutes to soften/hydrate and then eat – haven’t really found any shortcut to do it faster unless i don’t mind crunchy ramen

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