noodles

3 Articles

A hand holds a round disc of noodles wrapped in a translucent film with herb specs embedded in it.

Reimagined Ramen Comes In Edible Package

September 15, 2022 by 31 Comments

Hackers and college students alike reach for ramen when they want to fuel up on a budget, but, if you’re concerned about packaging waste, the plastic film and foil packets start to weigh on your conscience. [Holly Grounds] was sick of this compromise and came up with a way to have your packaging and eat it too.

[Holly] first experimented with different bioplastics until she developed a recipe for “an edible, tasteless starch-based bioplastic, that dissolves in contact with boiling water.” With that accomplished, she next integrated flavoring into the bioplastic wrapper so that there’s no foil packet. She found that herbs and spices worked, but larger solids like shrimp couldn’t be incorporated into the film.

For the finishing touch, she fashioned the noodles into a disk so they fit better in a bowl for cooking. To cook the noodles, you remove a puck from the wax paper sleeve holding multiple servings, add boiling water, stir, and enjoy. [Holly] says that her ramen packets are quicker to prepare than existing packets since there are fewer steps and the shape is optimized for cooking. That’s a win-win for the planet and convenience.

If you want to see another pasta packaging marvel, we’ve previously covered Flat Pack Pasta. Have your own project to reduce packaging waste? Submit it to the Save the World Wildcard round of the Hackaday Prize which closes on October 16th!

Making Instant Ramen A Bit More Instant

July 21, 2019 by 32 Comments

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!

Continue reading “Making Instant Ramen A Bit More Instant” →

Guitar Made From Noodles Glows In The Dark

July 6, 2019 by 22 Comments

Wood.  Specifically, certain types of tone woods; woods that impart a certain tone. That’s what guitars are made of. And occasionally, plastic, or metal, or fibreglass or, well, anything. [_forwardaudio_] built his out of noodles, because, why not?

Well, not completely out of noodles. Epoxy is used to give some strength to the noodles, because, despite the fantastic tone that noodles impart to the guitar, they’re not known for their strength. The epoxy helps keep the noodles in place, focusing their noodly tone.

To add a bit of punch to the look of the guitar, the back and front of the body have UV powder blended in, blue on the front and green on the back. Once the guitar was assembled, a set of UV strings were added as well, to add even more glowy goodness.

In the video (after the break) the build process is shown along with the simplified, volume only, wiring. At the end, [_forwardaudio_] noodles around on the guitar a bit.

I’ll show myself out.

If noodles aren’t your thing, maybe you’d prefer 3D printing an extended fretboard for your guitar, or to build yourself a 12 foot long guitar.

Continue reading “Guitar Made From Noodles Glows In The Dark” →