diffuser/index.html at main · iamdanielkitchen/diffuser · GitHub

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<!DOCTYPE html>
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<title>Curie — A piezoelectric essential oil diffuser, concept to shipped product</title>
<meta name="description" content="Curie: a three-bottle piezoelectric essential oil diffuser. Industrial design, custom PCB, Arduino firmware, native iOS app, retail packaging — shipped to twenty-three paying customers.">

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<meta property="og:title" content="Curie — A piezoelectric essential oil diffuser">
<meta property="og:description" content="From 3D-printed concept to twenty-three units shipped to paying customers. Industrial design, PCB, firmware, iOS app — coordinated directly.">
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</head>
<body>

<header class="site-header">
  <div class="masthead">Curie</div>
  <div class="meta">Portfolio · Daniel Kitchen</div>
</header>

<main>

  <!-- =============================================================
       HERO
       ============================================================= -->
  <section class="hero">
    <div class="hero-image">
      <img src="images/hero.jpg"
           alt="Curie diffuser on a living room table, amber bottles loaded, LED indicator lit, a person seated in the background.">
    </div>

    <div class="hero-title-block">
      <h1 class="hero-title">Curie<span class="dot">.</span></h1>
      <p class="hero-dek">A three-bottle piezoelectric essential oil diffuser. From 3D-printed concept to twenty-three paying customers.</p>
    </div>
  </section>

  <!-- =============================================================
       LEDE
       ============================================================= -->
  <div class="container">
    <p class="lede">Curie is a consumer essential oil diffuser I took from rough 3D-printed concept to shipped product. Industrial design, custom PCB, Arduino firmware, native iOS app, retail packaging. The mechanical design was mine — self-taught in Shapr3D, no formal background. Hardware and firmware specs were mine too, executed by two contract engineers I managed directly without a PM layer. Twenty-three units shipped to paying customers.</p>
  </div>

  <!-- =============================================================
       CHAPTER 01 — Iteration
       ============================================================= -->
  <section class="chapter">
    <div class="chapter-image">
      <div style="max-width: var(--max-w-wide); margin: 0 auto; padding: 0 24px;">
        <img src="images/evolution.jpg"
             alt="Three generations of Curie side by side: a rough white PLA print on the left, a refined white print in the middle, and the final matte-black production unit with visible mist on the right.">
      </div>
    </div>

    <div class="container">
      <div class="chapter-label"><span class="num">01</span>Iteration</div>
      <h2 class="chapter-heading">Three generations.</h2>
      <div class="chapter-body">
        <p>The first print, on the left, was a rough PLA shell with a piezoelectric transducer bolted in — just enough to prove the mist concept worked in the form factor I wanted. The second iteration refined the geometry, the airflow path, and the internal layout for serviceability.</p>
        <p>The third, in matte black, is the production unit. SLA-printed housing, amber glass quick-connect bottles, custom PCB. The plume above it is the device running.</p>
      </div>
    </div>
  </section>

  <!-- =============================================================
       CHAPTER 02 — Stack
       ============================================================= -->
  <section class="chapter">
    <div class="chapter-image">
      <div style="max-width: var(--max-w-wide); margin: 0 auto; padding: 0 24px;">
        <img src="images/building.jpg"
             alt="Hands working on Curie components — a partially assembled unit on the right, a round PCB with 'Curie' silkscreened on it in the center, essential oil bottles and 3D-printed housing pieces arrayed on a desk.">
      </div>
    </div>

    <div class="container">
      <div class="chapter-label"><span class="num">02</span>Stack</div>
      <h2 class="chapter-heading">Hardware, firmware, app.</h2>
      <div class="chapter-body">
        <p>The PCB was laid out in Eagle by a contracted electrical engineer, against requirements I specified — rotary encoder input, four-LED status feedback, piezoelectric driver circuit, WiFi for app control. The silkscreen on that round board reads "Curie."</p>
        <p>Firmware was written in Arduino by a contracted programmer, against a pin-map and behavior specification I drafted: timer-driven piezo pulses at four intensity levels, click-based UI, status feedback. The mechanical design — the housing, the bottle retention, the mist path, the base — was entirely mine in Shapr3D.</p>
      </div>
    </div>
  </section>

  <!-- =============================================================
       CHAPTER 03 — Control
       ============================================================= -->
  <section class="chapter">
    <div class="chapter-image">
      <div style="max-width: var(--max-w-wide); margin: 0 auto; padding: 0 24px;">
        <img src="images/app.jpg"
             alt="Hand holding an iPhone running the Curie iOS app, showing three essential oil slots — Lavender Bulgarian, Peppermint Eucalyptus, Cinnamon — each with its own strength slider and auto-timer schedule.">
      </div>
    </div>

    <div class="container">
      <div class="chapter-label"><span class="num">03</span>Control</div>
      <h2 class="chapter-heading">Three oils, independently scheduled.</h2>
      <div class="chapter-body">
        <p>The iOS app presents each bottle slot with its own strength slider and auto-timer schedule. Multiple oils can run simultaneously at independent intensities. Hardware, firmware, and app were built in parallel and integrated iteratively — a change to the firmware behavior spec usually meant a matching change in the app the same week.</p>
      </div>
    </div>
  </section>

  <!-- =============================================================
       CHAPTER 04 — Shipped
       ============================================================= -->
  <section class="chapter">
    <div class="dual-image">
      <img src="images/box.jpg"
           alt="Curie retail packaging: a matte-black box with the Curie wordmark in white, resting on a wooden bench.">
      <img src="images/alexa.jpg"
           alt="Curie diffuser sitting next to an Amazon Echo speaker on a dark table, the diffuser's blue LED visible, both devices roughly the same height.">
    </div>

    <div class="container">
      <div class="chapter-label"><span class="num">04</span>Shipped</div>
      <h2 class="chapter-heading">Twenty-three units to paying customers.</h2>
      <div class="chapter-body">
        <p>Curie went out in retail-grade packaging to twenty-three paying customers. It lived on the same shelves as their existing smart-home gear — shown here next to an Echo for scale. I handled manufacturing coordination, assembly, packaging, and fulfillment.</p>
        <p>The project wasn't scaled past that initial run. But it crossed the gap that mattered: from an idea in a notebook to a product people paid for, built, shipped, and used.</p>
      </div>
    </div>
  </section>

</main>

<!-- =============================================================
     FOOTER
     ============================================================= -->
<footer class="site-footer">
  <div class="inner">
    <p>Curie was active 2019–2021. This page is a portable record of the work — self-taught CAD, direct coordination of external engineering contractors, cross-stack ownership from concept through fulfillment.</p>
    <p>For the role types I build for now — forward deployed engineer, partner solutions engineer, AI deployment — this is the most compact demonstration I have of the same shape of work: complex technical problem, clear specification, external stakeholders coordinated without overhead, delivered product.</p>
    <div class="colophon">
      Daniel Kitchen · Stonington, CT · <a href="mailto:iamdanielkitchen@gmail.com">contact</a>
    </div>
  </div>
</footer>

</body>
</html>