Autonomous Ramen Vending Machine

A fully functional ramen vending machine, designed and built across a semester. The motivation was practical learning: I wanted to explore how mechanical, electrical, and software systems intersect in real-world automation. Ramen vending was chosen as a practical but uncommon product in Thailand that offered both genuine technical complexity and real-world relevance.

We iterated from cardboard prototypes to a fully integrated electromechanical machine.

I owned all software development and electronic system design: embedded firmware, circuit prototyping, and system integration. My teammate led mechanical design and fabrication using woodworking techniques and custom 3D-printed components.

The control system was built around ESP32 and Raspberry Pi Pico W microcontrollers.

Safety and reliability were major priorities because hot water and electrical systems interact directly. We used a commercial smart water boiler to mitigate the heating risk, but its closed-off design meant I had to reverse-engineer its control signals and interfaces to safely integrate it into the custom control architecture.

We reused VEX V5 robotics hardware because of resource and budget limitations. Like the boiler, its closed ecosystem meant reverse-engineering its interface so it could be driven from ESP32-based control logic. The pattern of reverse-engineering closed hardware to make a project actually possible became one of the major themes of the build, and a thread I carried into the Hydroponics Robot in 2026.

I designed and assembled custom circuits through schematic planning, soldering, debugging, and iterative testing, addressing real-world issues including water leakage, power regulation, signal reliability, and mechanical failure points.

On the software side, I built a web-based UI that let users interact with and monitor the machine, bridging the embedded system with higher-level software. LLM-assisted coding tools accelerated implementation while I kept full ownership of behavior.