Blake Drayson

Welcome to the outpouring of my tiny mind  🧠

This will hopefully be a place where I can post about projects I am working on or things that interest me. And who knows maybe someone else will find this content helpful or fun.

Euclid - Linux Setup Notes

Having just taken the rhe jump from Arch linux over to Fedora 40 (due to some recent AMD related graphics issues,) on my gaming pc Euclid, I needed to document the quirks of my system so the next time I swap around it will be less painful!

Read more >

Hugo And The NeXTcube

I have deployed websites using Wordpress for many years, I have hosted this site and draytronics.co.uk using Wordpress. But as for all the upsides of convenience and familiarity, as time has gone on I have been less and less happy with security, performance and bloat. Even the simplicity of editing has taken a backwards step over the years.

So I have taken the opportunity to reconsider and move this site over to Hugo, and run it on some low power hardware with a vintage and fun twist.

Read more >

Glass Brick Light With Smart Control

When I was idly browsing Instagram I came across an advert for (in my opinion) an incredibly expensive (€139) glass brick light. I can’t find the original advert but I believe this article shows the light from the same company.

The light used manual filters to change the colour, was not smart and I think was a lot for what is mainly one glass brick. I thought I could do better and for a lot cheaper, so I did.

Read more >

Mechanical Keyboard Prototype With V-USB & QMK

This is a relatively complete guide on how to build a mechanical keyboard prototype and get it functioning with QMK. Two different microcontrollers will be demonstrated (ATMegs32A, ATMega328P) and it should provide a solid starting point for anyone wishing to build a keyboard from the ground up. This is going to the the base I build on with an aim to designing, testing and producing a selection of full keyboards.

Read more >

Build A HomeKit Enabled WiFi LED Strip

I have a work area that I wanted to provide some additional lighting for, and like everything else in my home I wanted it to work with Apple HomeKit. I did not want to spend a large amount of money buying something like a Phillips Hue Strip so I thought I would build my own. This will be a short guide to how I built a HomeKit Enabled WiFi LED Strip and the software I wrote to run it.

Read more >