Hacking An AUX Port For A Google Home Mini

Even if you don’t want to add an AUX audio output port to your Google Home Mini, you’ll still want to see a pair of videos from [SnekTek]. After all, you’ll eventually want to open it up, and putting it over some boiling water might not have been your first idea. You can see both videos, below.

However, he did want to add an AUX port. The biggest challenge was finding a place to put the connector. Even after identifying a likely spot, a bolt interfered with the case closing and so he removed it. The one bolt didn’t seem to bother the final result.

Electrically, he found that to keep the AUX out to about 1V, he needed a reduction in voltage. Two small resistors put right in the speaker line took care of that. Although, be sure to watch the second video if you plan to recreate this hack since the value of the resistors changed.

Truthfully, the AUX jack part isn’t nearly as interesting as opening the thing up, although we have to admit, we wouldn’t mind putting a BlueTooth adapter in that plug to stream to a big speaker that isn’t cast-enabled. However, we have noticed it is getting harder and harder to break into consumer electronics, and you never know when you’ll need to get into one of these to hack, repair, or cannibalize.

With the cheaper mini version of the Google smart device, we expect to see more hacks for it. We’ve seen some creative mash ups and, of course, you can always roll your own hardware.

10 thoughts on “Hacking An AUX Port For A Google Home Mini

  1. Eh technically you could run it without changing the output speaker voltages and just make sure to leave the speaker on a lower volume.I did the same thing with a $5 bluetooth speaker to add bluetooth functionality to a big old pair of speakers.

  2. I believe the home mini is doing a bunch of DSP to make the crappy speaker sound better; i.e. if you put it through something better it’s likely going to sound tinny and compressed. The chromecast audio is worth the ~$20, then use the mini as a microphone.

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