A small company best known for stewarding Home Assistant, the open smart home platform favored by people who like to run their own systems, has begun shipping a $69 box meant to pull older speakers, stereos and televisions into that world. It is a modest answer to an old problem: most of the audio and screen gear already sitting in homes was built before anyone imagined it would need to join a network. Early reviewers have tried it and come away impressed by how much a single inexpensive device can rescue. Whether it holds up through ordinary months of use, and whether it draws people beyond t
Home Assistant's $69 Aux-2 Hub Aims to Bring Older Speakers and TVs Into the Smart Home
A small company best known for stewarding Home Assistant, the open smart home platform favored by people who like to run their own systems, has begun shipping a $69 box meant to pull older speakers, stereos and televisions into that world. It is a modest answer to an old problem: most of the audio and screen gear already sitting in homes was built before anyone imagined it would need to join a network. Early reviewers have tried it and come away impressed by how much a single inexpensive device can rescue. Whether it holds up through ordinary months of use, and whether it draws people beyond the hobbyists who built the platform, remains to be seen.
A $69 box from Nabu Casa, the company behind Home Assistant, has started shipping, and the first wave of reviews has arrived. The Aux-2 has a single purpose: to give older audio and television equipment a place in a smart home that was never built with it in mind.
The early coverage is encouraging. The Verge called it a smart home multi-tool, ZDNET described it as a tiny box that brings smart capabilities to older tech, and Forbes said it aims to smarten up dumb gadgets. The most vivid result came from XDA, where an old speaker was made to play in sync with a Sonos system through Home Assistant, with the Aux-2 as the only addition.
The reports are still early. They describe first impressions, not months of daily use, and they leave open questions about supported models, setup effort and long-term reliability. What the next round of independent testing reveals will decide whether the device simply rewards its existing fans or opens Home Assistant to a much wider audience.
A $69 box from Nabu Casa, the company behind Home Assistant, has started shipping, and the first round of coverage is in. The device is called the Aux-2 (written in one headline as Home Assistant Connect AUX-2), and it has one job: to bring older audio and television gear into a smart home that never anticipated it.
The coverage arrives as a cluster of hands-on pieces from several outlets. The Verge described it as a "smart home multi-tool" after spending time with it. ZDNET framed it as a tiny box that gives older tech smart home capabilities for $69. Forbes wrote that it wants to smarten up "dumb" tech. BigGo Finance reported that Nabu Casa is shipping the hub to bring old stereos and TVs into Home Assistant.
The most concrete result comes from XDA. Its reviewer reported that an old speaker now plays in sync with a Sonos system through Home Assistant, and that the only addition needed was the $69 device. That is the use case the product seems built around: a speaker that was never designed to talk to a network, folded into a multi-room setup alongside gear that was.
Nabu Casa is the company that develops and supports Home Assistant, the smart home platform popular with people who prefer to run their own systems. The Aux-2 extends that platform to equipment that sits outside the usual compatibility lists, namely legacy speakers, stereos and TVs.
There are limits to what the available material shows. The coverage we have is made up of headlines and early impressions, not detailed technical breakdowns, so specifics about supported models, setup effort and how well the sync holds up over time are not laid out here. The reports describe what reviewers experienced in early use, not months of daily operation.
That is the open question. Independent long-term testing will show whether the Aux-2 is reliable day after day, and whether a $69 price and a pitch built around gear people already own can draw in people beyond the enthusiasts who have traditionally been Home Assistant's core audience.
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