Nabu Casa launches $69 Home Assistant Connect Aux-2 multi-function smart home box

Nabu Casa, the commercial arm of the Open Home Foundation that maintains Home Assistant, has released the Home Assistant Connect Aux-2, a compact multi-purpose device designed to pull more equipment into the open-source smart home platform. According to The Verge, which spent a few days with the hardware, the $69 unit is roughly the size of a deck of cards and — contrary to what that capability usually implies — notably easy to set up.

What the hardware offers

The Aux-2's port selection does most of the talking. As The Verge reports, it carries 2.4GHz Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Ethernet with Power over Ethernet support, USB-A, USB-C, a combined digital and analog audio jack, a Grove connector for peripherals such as sensors, buttons and LEDs, and a pair of RS-232 serial ports. The back of the unit keeps things minimal: a reset switch, USB-C for power, and the Ethernet jack.

Four jobs in one device

Those connectors map to several distinct roles. The Aux-2 can act as a Bluetooth proxy, relaying nearby Bluetooth devices into Home Assistant. Its USB port accepts a Nabu Casa Z-Wave or Zigbee antenna, useful when a Home Assistant hub sits somewhere with poor radio coverage. The serial ports can control equipment such as televisions, AV receivers and solar inverters. And the audio jack can feed an amplifier or powered speakers, turning older audio gear into a streaming endpoint.

Built on ESPHome

Under the hood, the Aux-2 runs ESPHome, the open platform for building smart home devices from inexpensive ESP boards, and it relies entirely on existing Home Assistant and ESPHome integrations for its features. The Verge notes that the serial integration was written earlier this year, while Music Assistant and SendSpin — the software behind audio output — are still in active development. SendSpin, a whole-home audio standard also developed by the Open Home Foundation, is meant to group speakers across different protocols, though The Verge's reviewer had not yet gotten that working.

Setup in practice

The Verge describes a setup process that was smoother than expected. Firmware was flashed and Wi-Fi credentials entered from a browser while the device was attached to a computer over USB-C. After being moved to its final location and powered through USB-C or PoE, the device was discovered by the ESPHome integration inside Home Assistant, which walked the reviewer through enabling its capabilities.

In practice, the Bluetooth proxy proved immediately useful: Govee Bluetooth hygrometers placed in a garage refrigerator appeared automatically and held their connection through three walls and an appliance door. Getting audio to a set of unused in-wall speakers took less than half an hour in total, most of it spent configuring Music Assistant, which can play from services such as Spotify and YouTube Music and send output to devices including Sonos, AirPlay and Google Cast. The serial control feature — which The Verge calls the most intriguing capability — went untested.

A convenience play in an open ecosystem

As The Verge points out, the Aux-2 does nothing an ESP32 board and some accessories could not. The Apollo Automations Cast-1, at $35, already covers the same Bluetooth proxying and music casting the reviewer is actually using. But the reviewer frames that as the design working as intended: the ecosystem is open by default, Nabu Casa and Apollo both help fund the Open Home Foundation, and both simply sell hardware that is less fiddly than a DIY build. The Verge suggests the Aux-2 may even act as an on-ramp, with the reviewer now more inclined to experiment with ESP32 boards bought years ago and never used.

Why it matters

Home Assistant's long-standing weakness has not been capability but friction, and the Aux-2 is a direct attempt to close that gap. It bundles several common integration headaches — spotty Bluetooth coverage, badly placed radio dongles, serial-only equipment and legacy audio gear — into one supported product that configures through the Home Assistant interface rather than a soldering iron. It also illustrates the Open Home Foundation's funding model: open-source software sustained by sales of convenient hardware, with DIY alternatives explicitly encouraged rather than locked out. For anyone who has meant to build an ESPHome device for years and never got around to it, the Aux-2 is a $69 shortcut — and a sign that the Home Assistant ecosystem is maturing toward everyday usability.