Home Assistant’s New Zigbee And Thread Dongle Goes Live

Home Assistant has just taken the covers off of its latest device: the Connect ZBT-2, which is a big USB dongle that will give your smart home a high-performance Zigbee or Thread connection.

It’s the follow-up to the company’s first-gen stick (the ZBT-1, previously called SkyConnect), and while it looks a lot more chunky, that’s because it’s packing a serious performance boost.

It’s not quite as big of a beast as the Connect ZWA-2 that went live back in August, but it’s also maybe a stretch to call it a dongle. Think Atari gaming joystick from the 1980s and you’re on the right lines.

Built by Nabu Casa (as all official Home Assistant hardware is), the Connect ZBT-2 runs on the new Silicon Labs MG24 chip, which delivers up to four times the speed of the old model and a much more responsive network overall.

It’s still a “choose one” setup; you dedicate it to either Zigbee or Thread when you first plug it in, but Home Assistant says it’s now rock-solid for both.

The redesigned antenna also helps push range and stability, especially for people running bigger Zigbee networks with sensors and switches scattered throughout the house.

The ZBT-2 moves to Home Assistant’s second-generation “Connect” hardware standard, built to be open, repairable, and easy to tinker with.

You can open it up without tools or glue, and the accessible pins make it a dream for developers.

Despite Matter grabbing most of the smart home headlines lately, Zigbee’s still the protocol quietly holding everything together. Systems like Philips Hue, Aqara, IKEA, and countless others continue to rely on it and because Matter bridges can expose Zigbee devices to other platforms, a lot of homes will keep running mixed Zigbee-and-Matter setups for years.

The ZBT-2 sits right in the middle of that world: you can use it as a Zigbee coordinator for Home Assistant’s ZHA or Zigbee2MQTT integrations, or spin it up as a Thread border router using OpenThread and team it up with the Home Assistant Matter server.

It’s still plug-and-play, with full support for OTA firmware updates from major brands and native compatibility baked into the latest Home Assistant builds (version 2025.10.1 or newer).

You just need to plug it into a Home Assistant Green, Yellow, or Raspberry Pi and you’re good to go.

For Home Assistant users who’ve been running the original SkyConnect stick, this is a worthy upgrade (there’s a migration tool) that will make your smart home feel snappier and more stable, no Matter how your devices connect – pun very much intended.

The Home Assistant Connect ZBT-2 is available now and costs $49.99.

Forbes