Nabu Casa's Aux-2 Adds Bluetooth, Serial, and Audio Ports to Home Assistant for $69
Nabu Casa has launched the Home Assistant Connect Aux-2, a $69 hardware device that extends the Home Assistant platform into Bluetooth, serial, and audio equipment. The Verge published hands-on coverage of the unit on 2026-11-11. Nabu Casa is the commercial side of the Open Home Foundation, which runs Home Assistant.
The Aux-2 is about the size of a deck of cards. Its front panel carries 2.4GHz Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Ethernet, USB-A, USB-C, a digital/analog audio jack, a Grove port (a small standardized connector for sensors and add-on modules), and two RS-232 serial ports (an older wired standard for talking to equipment such as AV gear). The rear holds a reset switch, a USB-C connector, and an Ethernet port with Power over Ethernet (PoE) support, which lets the same cable deliver power as well as data.
Several of those interfaces map to specific integration gaps. The Aux-2 can bridge Bluetooth devices into a Home Assistant setup. Its USB port accepts a Nabu Casa Z-Wave or Zigbee antenna, so the same unit can host one of the two low-power mesh radios that most home-automation stacks rely on. The serial connectors can control TVs, AV receivers, and solar inverters, and the audio jack can feed an amplifier or powered speakers for streaming music.
The unit is based on ESPHome, the open-source framework that Home Assistant users commonly use to flash custom firmware onto ESP-family microcontrollers. That lineage matters for anyone who already maintains ESPHome configurations, since the device sits within a toolchain many users know.
The broader context here is the fragmentation of the home-automation hardware layer. A typical installation has accumulated separate radios, bridges, and adapters, each with its own power supply, firmware cycle, and failure mode. Consolidating those interfaces into one enclosure reduces the number of boxes a user must place, power, and maintain. Whether integration quality matches the port count is the question that hands-on testing and long-term use will answer.
Local serial control deserves particular attention. Controlling a solar inverter or AV receiver without routing commands through a vendor cloud is a capability home-automation users have long wanted and proprietary ecosystems rarely expose. The Aux-2 does not change the underlying protocols or the difficulty of mapping each device's serial command set. It does give a single supported endpoint for that work.
In my view, the more consequential detail is the PoE-capable Ethernet port. Powering the unit over the same cable that carries its network traffic simplifies placement in a wall cabinet, a ceiling space, or an equipment rack, where a power outlet may be inconvenient. For installers and enthusiasts who run wired networks, that choice matches the way many serious builds are already cabled.
Taken together, the specification points to a device aimed at users who want local control over more of their home than radio-only hubs have typically reached. At $69, it competes less on price than on how many environments it can serve from one unit. The next useful measure is how the Aux-2 performs once deployed alongside the Z-Wave, Zigbee, Bluetooth, and serial devices it is designed to bridge.
