Community Highlights: 5th edition March 15, 2020 three minutes reading time

Time for the fifth enactment of the Community Highlights!

We’ve received quite a few recommendations, but also closely monitored social media and found some gems to share again!

Controlling 7! marine aquariums with Home Assistant

Let’s start with showcasing a highly unusual, but impressive, Home Assistant setup. It is shared on our Facebook group by Kevin McPeake. Kevin’s setup has a total of 5 Home Assistant instances, controlling 7x marine aquariums!

Kevin's impressive setup for his 7 aquariums.

Those are some big views Kevin! I bet you will be happy with the new Lovelace features that are coming in Home Assistant Core 0.107. It will help you to trim down that a bit, into multiple Lovelace Dashboards (now in beta, sneak peak?).

Click here to check out Kevin’s post on our Facebook group.

Thanks, Walt_H for sending in this item! 👍

Live energy consumption screen

Energy saving is good for the environment (and your wallet). However, to do that, you have to become aware of your actual usage. /u/Lau-ie shared his energy consumption screen on our subreddit.

This gives insight into the current usage, but also in the usage & costs of the consumed energy of the last 24 hours.

Do you actively monitor your energy usage? What does your dashboard look like?

A DIY smart magnetic key holder

And here is one from James Callaghan, who created really smart and easy to replicate magnet key holder, using a Xiaomi Aqara Door/Window sensor. Yes, this key holder works on Zigbee.

My mind goes crazy at the number of problems a single sensor can solve. For me, this was for reassurance using @****home_assistant**** but when you think how this could be applied elsewhere concierge services to those with memory issues etc.. #smarthome #inclusivity #accessibility #IoT pic.twitter.com/sirygbCE7p — James Callaghan #Microsoft (@jamescallaghan) March 9, 2020

Consumer Reports: Open call for non-resident technologist fellows

Consumer Reports is an American non-profit organization that does independent, (product) testing and research for consumers to provide truth, transparency and fairness. Their results are published in a monthly magazine and on their website.

The Consumer Reports Digital Lab offers paid, non-resident fellowships to study the effects of connected (IoT) products and services. They welcome anyone interested in public technology research to apply for the fellowship.

If you are interested in this, more information can be found here:

Got a tip for the next edition?

Have you seen (or made) something awesome, interesting, unique, amazing, inspirational, unusual or funny, using Home Assistant?

Click here to send us your Community Highlight suggestion.

Also, don’t forget to share your creations with us via Social Media:

Twitter it! Be sure to mention @home_assistant

Share it on our Facebook group

Post it to our subreddit

Tag @homeasssistant on Instagram

Or via chat, drop us a line in the #lounge at Discord

See you next edition!