(WNY News Now) – JAMESTOWN, N.Y. — In a world increasingly dependent on technology and connected systems, one local inventor is quietly working toward a future he believes can be safer and smarter.

Inside a development environment filled with prototype electronics, firmware builds, engineering diagrams, manufacturing discussions, and late-night design sessions, Jamestown native Blake Robert McAffee is building what he hopes will become a new generation of safety technology through his company, B.IR.T Technology LLC.

B.IR.T Technology LLC is developing electrical-safety and predictive-monitoring systems designed for both everyday electrical products and industrial environments.

McAffee, who describes himself as a systems architect and inventor, has spent years developing concepts centered on electrical safety, predictive monitoring, product development, and infrastructure. While many remain in active development, several projects are progressing through prototype refinement, firmware integration, and manufacturing collaboration.

At the center of B.IR.T Technology’s current development efforts are two primary systems: the Smart Cord Guardian and the IRPC, short for Intelligent Resilient Predictive Core.

The Smart Cord Guardian is designed as a consumer electrical safety device that monitors extension cord and power-use conditions in real time. The system aims to track temperature, voltage irregularities, current load behavior, and overall cord health, with the goal of helping identify dangerous conditions before they become serious failures.

B.IR.T’s plans for the Smart Cord Guardian extend beyond extension cords. McAffee says the company is developing the technology for both grounded three-prong configurations – including its tool-free threaded ground-prong design – and two-flat-blade configurations used across many common electrical products.

That broader approach could allow the monitoring technology to be integrated directly into the power cords of other products rather than limited to a stand-alone extension cord. One application B.IR.T is exploring is an electric space heater that would use Smart Cord Guardian cord technology as part of the product’s power connection.

Over the next several years, McAffee says B.IR.T plans to introduce additional products and pursue partnerships built around the same cord platform. The long-term goal is to make smarter power-cord technology increasingly common across everyday electrical products, turning the power cord from a passive connection into an active part of the product’s safety system.

“Our products are for people who have something to protect,” McAffee said. “That might be their children, their family, their pets, their home, or the things they could never replace. That’s why we build them.”

Meanwhile, the IRPC is being designed for industrial and commercial environments, including factories, CNC machinery, robotic systems, and electrical monitoring. Unlike equipment that reacts only after failures occur, the IRPC centers on predictive maintenance and system awareness — technology McAffee believes could eventually help reduce downtime, equipment damage, and electrical hazards.

“We’re trying to move beyond passive electrical systems,” McAffee explained. “The goal is to create infrastructure that can actually understand stress, degradation, and abnormal behavior before catastrophic failure happens.”

What makes McAffee’s work unique is not simply the products themselves, but the way he approaches them as connected systems rather than isolated inventions. His projects combine hardware engineering, software architecture, firmware development, user interface design, predictive modeling, and infrastructure planning into a single ecosystem.

Behind those projects is a constant cycle of testing and revision, with recent work centered on firmware integration, prototype reviews, manufacturing coordination, and safety validation.

McAffee says one of the biggest lessons he has learned throughout the process is that innovation rarely happens overnight.

“A lot of people see the final product someday,” he said. “But they don’t always see the thousands of hours behind the scenes — the failures, redesigns, testing, sleepless nights, and constant problem-solving it takes to bring real systems to life.”

Friends and colleagues describe McAffee as hands-on across development. Rather than outsourcing creative direction, he remains involved in hardware architecture, firmware logic, branding, user experience, manufacturing strategy, and infrastructure planning.

That attention to detail continues to shape B.IR.T Technology as the company expands its engineering capabilities and roadmap.

Looking ahead, McAffee says the company will focus on electrical safety, predictive technologies, product integration, and scalable platforms designed to solve practical problems.

While careful not to overstate projects still in development, he believes the work could eventually contribute to broader conversations about electrical safety, smarter power connections, infrastructure modernization, and predictive monitoring.

At its core, however, McAffee says the mission remains simple.

“I want to build systems that genuinely help people,” he said. “If we can make infrastructure smarter, safer, and more reliable for everyday people, then all the years of work become worth it.”

For Jamestown, the work also represents something larger: proof that meaningful innovation does not have to begin in Silicon Valley or a massive corporate laboratory. Sometimes it begins locally — with an idea, a vision, and the willingness to keep building long after most people would have stopped.

And for Blake McAffee and B.IR.T Technology, the building process is only beginning.