No, I don't have a blog. These are just my private projects that I make for my own use. I am working as a software developer and learning electronics as a hobby.
The backlight is going to be a box supplied directly from AC, connecting up to 6 strips of individually addressable WS2812 RGB LEDs, providing up to 10A at 5V (50mA per LED == 200 LEDs at full power). It will be connected using galvanically isolated Full-Speed USB to the PC.
For now I will have some pre-programmed sequences but I plan to make a piece of software that will make it possible to match LEDs to the borders of image on the screen though I have no idea how to do that at the moment.
I've also been playing with WS2812 LEDs as ambient/halo lighting around my monitor. I'm using a cheap ESP-32 dev board to allow control from my phone via WiFi even when my computer is asleep. I went much smaller though - only 16 pixels, powered by an old phone charger.
This works for now because my primary use-case is ambient lighting when the room would otherwise be dark. I'm planning to build some larger-scale higher-density light panels to provide more illumination for those dark winter days.
I have a bunch of STM32 Nucleo and Discovery boards that I use and which one I use will depend on circumstances.
For prototyping I use both breadboards and perfboards. I use breadboards for small fast prototypes and perfboards when I know I am going to develop it over a longer time or when I have some special requirements (like AC power on board or a component that has 2.54mm pitch but is not breadboardable) that exclude or make it more difficult to use on a breadboard.
For breadboard I would default to use STM32L432 Nucleo-32 which is breadboardable and doesn't use much space.
For perfboard I default on either STM32L452 Nucleo-64 or STM32F303 Discovery. I don't solder them to board but instead just insert it in the board and then put couple of pieces of plastic from 2.54mm pitch header with the metal pins removed. This mounts the board securely in place without having to solder it. I use dupont jumper wires to connect it to the rest of the board where I would typically solder the rest of components (unless I also don't want to solder them in for some reason).
I would typically solder in things that are disposable to me that I don't want to flap around.