Brooklyn Bagel Shop Is Using Plug-In Batteries to Lower Its Electric Bill

Black Seed Bagels in Bushwick has three carry-on-suitcase-sized batteries plugged into the wall behind its catering kitchen. One powers a commercial oven called the Baconator (thousands of pounds of meat a week). Two more run energy-hungry fridges. The batteries are 2.8 kWh each, supplied for free by David Energy, a Brooklyn-based retail energy provider running a pilot program with NYC small businesses.

The target here is demand charges … those nasty fees Con Edison bills based on your peak 15-minute power draw in a given month. For NYC commercial customers, demand charges can run 15% to 50% of the total bill. By shifting big appliances to battery power during peak windows, Black Seed cuts its maximum grid draw and pays less. Co-owner Noah Bernamoff figures even $80/month savings per location across 10 shops adds up to almost $10,000/year. In the bagel business, that’s real money.

David Energy’s software decides exactly when each appliance switches to battery. As of mid-January, the startup had signed deals for about 50 locations and 500+ kWh of storage … fast-food joints, a day spa, a dog groomer (the battery cushions a fur-drying machine, which is a sentence I didn’t expect to write today). CEO James McGinniss sees this as a wedge into virtual power plant territory: batteries store power when it’s cheap, avoid pulling from the grid when it’s expensive, and can participate in NYISO demand-response programs that pay customers to cut usage during grid stress events.

The reason plug-in batteries matter specifically in NYC? Fire safety regs. The FDNY has subjected stationary lithium-ion installations to rules so strict they’re impractical for most buildings. Plug-in units sidestep the whole interconnection and permitting headache. If a customer leaves, David Energy just picks the battery back up.

This pilot builds on the growing plug-in energy movement … Jackery and EcoFlow portable units for household backup, Pila Energy‘s mesh battery system designed for daily bill reduction, and the balcony solar panels that are already powering over a million homes in Germany.

Saw this over on Canary Media which is new to me.

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From the Adafruit Learning System: Easter Egg Light Stand

Light up your favorite Easter eggs and display them for all to see! We’ll make a simple paper-crafted stand from a dixie cup, hook up the NeoPixel lights, and choose colors with drag-and-drop code using Microsoft MakeCode.

Check out the guide from Erin St. Blaine and make your own using these items in the Adafruit shop!

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Magna-Tiles Hologram #PeppersGhost

With 10 tiles you and a phone you can wow the kids with a hologram! via @Ddadchatchannel on Instagram

 

If you aren’t familiar with Magna-Tiles, you don’t have children. The ingenious building system uses tiles with magnets that satisfyingly snap together. If you have a set handy this would be a great experiment to try with your kids. It demonstrates Pepper’s Ghost with a phone an and a few tiles!

Shared by Dadchatchannel on Instagram:

Impress your little one!

Follow this tutorial to make a hologram with your magnet tiles. You just need a few pieces and then search for hologram videos on YouTube.

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Turning Maclock into a Working Mac

In this YouTube video This Does Not Compute turns their Maclock into a functional, vintage Mac.

Learn how to make a mini mac with HalloWing in the Adafruit Learning System

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CircuitPython 10.1.3 Released!

From the GitHub release page:

This is CircuitPython 10.1.3, the latest bugfix revision of CircuitPython, and is a new stable release.

(The 10.1.2 release was discarded due to incorrect tagging.)

Highlights of this release

• Adafruit MagTag: auto-detect different versions of e-ink display on 2025 MagTag.
• Espressif: fix board I2C object deinit(). Fixes crash with Adafruit Qualia library.

Download from circuitpython.org

Firmware downloads are available from the downloads page on circuitpython.org. The site makes it easy to select the correct file and language for your board.

Installation

To install follow the instructions in the Welcome to CircuitPython! guide. To install the latest libraries, see this page in that guide.

Try code.circuitpython.org or the latest version of the Mu editor for creating and editing your CircuitPython programs and for easy access to the CircuitPython serial connection (the REPL).

Documentation

Documentation is available in readthedocs.io.

Port status

CircuitPython has a number of “ports” that are the core implementations for different microcontroller families. Stability varies on a per-port basis. As of this release, these ports are consider stable (but see Known Issues below):

• atmel-samd: Microchip SAMD21, SAMx5x
• cxd56: Sony Spresense
• espressif: Espressif ESP32, ESP32-C2, ESP32-C3, ESP32-C6, ESP32-C61, ESP32-H2, ESP32-S2, ESP32-S3
• nordic: Nordic nRF52840, nRF52833
• raspberrypi: Raspberry Pi RP2040, RP2350
• stm: ST STM32F4 chip family

These ports are considered alpha and will have bugs and missing functionality:

• analog: Analog Devices MAX32690
• broadcom: Raspberry Pi boards such as RPi 4, RPi Zero 2W
• espressif: , ESP32-P4
• litex: fomu
• mimxrt10xx: NXP i.MX RT10xxx
• renode: hardware simulator
• silabs: Silicon Labs MG24 family
• stm: ST non-STM32F4 chip families
• zephyr: multiplatform RTOS: testing with Nordic nRF5340, nRF54H20, nRF54L15, nRF7002; NXP i.MX RT1170, MCXN947; Renesas RA6M5, RA8D1; ST STM32H7, STM32N657, STM32U7,

Changes

Fixes and enhancements

Port and board-specific changes

Analog Devices

Broadcom

Espressif

• busio.I2C: Check if already deinited in unlock(). Fixes crash with board I2C objects. #10838. Thanks @dhalbert and thanks @rsbohn for issue.

i.MX

Nordic

renode

RP2

SAMx

SiLabs

Spresense

STM

Zephyr

Individual boards

• Adafruit MagTag: Auto-detect variations in e-ink display model on 2025 MagTag. #10836. Thanks @dhalbert and thanks @caternuson, @Timeline8, and @grgrant for diagnosis and testing.

Documentation changes

Build and infrastructure changes

Translation additions and improvements

New boards

Known issues

• See https://ift.tt/jasSbWD for other issues, including issues still to be addressed for:
  • 10.1.x
  • 10.x.x
  • 11.0.0
  • long term
• Native-code .mpy files are not working. This capability is currently enabled only on the winterbloom_sol board.

Thanks

Thank you to all who used, tested, and contributed toward this release, including the contributors above, and many others on GitHub and Discord. Join us on the Discord chat to collaborate.

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Installing Portainer to the Raspberry Pi

PiMylifeUp updated their guide on how to install Portainer to your Pi. Check it out!

Portainer is a lightweight and open-source container management tool.

Using this tool, you can create, manage and delete your Docker containers running on your Raspberry Pi with ease.

Not only is the software straightforward to use, but it is also dead easy to install as it runs entirely within a Docker container.

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MicroPython Now Requires AI Disclosure on Every Pull Request

MicroPython has added a Generative AI Policy into their Contributor Guidelines, and PR #18842 adds a matching declaration into the GitHub PR template. Every contributor now picks one: “I did not use Generative AI tools” or “I used them, but a human has checked the code.”

Angus Gratton, who opened the PR said… “it’s easy to write embedded code with AI assistance, however it is not easy for Generative AI to produce high quality embedded code without a human closely involved. The result? PRs that look great at first glance but eat maintainer time during review.”

They didn’t go full Zig and ban AI outright. Gratton says he hopes they won’t have to, because for every sloppy AI contribution there’s been a thoughtful one where the human actually took care. They’d rather people disclose than hide it.

The PR discussion gets a little spicy! One contributor flagged a PR where an AI agent was iterating directly against MicroPython’s CI, flooding notifications with comments and push after push. Others raised unresolved legal copyright and licensing questions about AI-generated code, its origins, and what it means for the various open-source licenses. And Andrew Leech, who approved the change says “implementation time is approaching free for me, which means I have more time to focus on planning, reviewing, and testing.”

GitHub itself is exploring PR restrictions to deal with the AI contribution flood. MicroPython picked transparency over prohibition.

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