WiFi Nomiku

I received a WiFi Nomiku over the weekend from backing their Kickstarter campaign back in August of 2014.

The circulator comes with a small “Quick Start” guide, but I’m a guy so I don’t do instructions. Connecting to the wifi network was pretty simple, just press the menu icon at the bottom left, use the ring to scroll to the wifi option and push the action button on the bottom right. It then lets you select your network and enter your wifi password. If you use a strong wifi password it can be a little annoying to enter, you have to scroll through all the lowercase letters to get to the uppercase ones, and then through all of those to get to the numbers/symbols. Once connected to wifi the circulator can be paired to a phone or tablet which has their “Tender” (NOT Tinder) app installed. You open the menu on the circulator and scroll to “Quick Start” and press the action button to get a pairing code, then open Tender, log in (if needed), open the app menu, tap “My Devices” and tap the “Add” button. It then asks you to enter the pairing code, one annoying thing I noticed here was that the app automatically capitalizes the first letter entered while the pairing code uses only lower case letters and numbers. I couldn’t get it to pair until I made sure the first letter was changed back to lowercase so either the code is case sensitive or I just kept entering it incorrectly the first few times. Once your device is paired you can use it to control the circulator from anywhere you have a signal, I left the circulator set up on a water bath in sleep mode this morning and was able to turn it on and off from work and see the current bath temp.

I didn’t do much cooking over the holiday weekend but I did play around with the circulator a bit. I filled a 12 quart Cambro with 10 liters of cold tap water and compared how long it took the WiFi Nomiku to heat the bath to 130°f compared to the Anova Precision Cooker I’ve been using. Both baths started at 52.4°f, the Anova took 50 minutes to reach temp while the new Nomiku needed just under 28 minutes to do the same. I also checked the bath temperature accuracy with a Thermapen and it was spot on.

Overall I’m pretty happy with the new circulator. the only change I would suggest would be to change the clip to something that would allow more flexibility when choosing a bath container. I would like to be able to set up the circulator in a beer cooler filled with an ice bath to keep things at refrigerator temps until the circulator is remotely turned on, I;m not sure how thick a container wall the current clip can accommodate.

Cool, good to hear about it. I backed the Kickstarter campaign also and am looking forward to playing with this.

It’s always good to see new circulator coming out. And while it’s good to have a device that is powerful enough to heat cold water to hot, it’s not that necessary if you use hot tap water to start. Most important is accuracy and longevity. An IC should use very little energy to maintain a set temperature. I was never too enthused by the nomiku’s first IC. The competition is getting interesting with the Joule by ChefSteps and the new Nomiku and the wifi Anova. This should prove interesting as ICs become more mainstream. I use mine often

If I’m setting up a bath I’ll generally fill it with hot tap water, but if I know I’m going to be using it again within a day or so I’ll just leave it set up and ready to go. Currently I’m trying to lose the weight I gained over the holidays so I’m using the circulator every evening to retherm meals I make on the weekends which have been portioned out to a set calorie count, vacuum bagged and put in the freezer. The wifi feature on this circulator has proven to be useful at least to me, I can turn on the circulator remotely as I leave work and have the bath heated and ready by the time I get home.