Budget Energy-Efficient Home Lab Tour | Unifi Cloud Gateway Ultra + Raspberry Pi + AI Rig Welcome to the ultimate budget-friendly, energy-efficient home lab setup! In this video, I’ll take you inside my real-world, power-conscious network lab—built for performance, privacy, and future-proof control—without breaking the bank. Whether you're into self-hosting, home automation, or experimenting with local AI, this setup gives you a modular, scalable foundation. Let’s break it down. 🧠 Core Networking: Unifi Cloud Gateway Ultra + USW-Lite-16-PoE At the heart of the network is the Unifi Cloud Gateway Ultra, a compact yet powerful router and firewall with VLAN segmentation built right in. It’s paired with the USW-Lite-16-PoE switch, which gives me: 16 Gigabit Ethernet ports 8 PoE+ ports to power devices like Raspberry Pis and access points This combo offers rock-solid performance with low energy draw—ideal for 24/7 operation. Product Links N100 Router - Unifi Cloud Gateway Ultra - Unifi U6 - Unifi U7 Pro - Unifi 16 Port POE Managed Switch - Amazon Eero Wifi - Nivida 3060 12 GB Graphics Card - Raspberry Pi 5 8 GB - Raspberry Pi 5 vPOE Hat - Other Home Lab Goodies - 🖥️ VLAN 1 – Trusted Devices & Local AI This is my Default / Trusted VLAN, and it’s where all the heavy lifting happens. Devices on this VLAN include: My main PC with an NVIDIA RTX 3060 GPU – This doubles as my local AI workstation, running models like LLaMA or Stable Diffusion without relying on the cloud. Laptops & NAS – All securely networked for media storage, backups, and productivity. WiFi – Handled by a Unifi U6 access point, this VLAN’s wireless coverage is clean and isolated. It’s all optimized for speed, stability, and security. 🍓 VLAN 2 – Raspberry Pi Lab This is my Untrusted VLAN, built entirely for experimentation and app hosting: Multiple Raspberry Pis, each running Docker containers to handle lightweight services, media servers, dashboards, and internal tools. All Pis are powered by PoE via the USW-Lite-16 switch, making cable management clean and efficient. No WiFi on this VLAN to limit exposure—just wired-only for maximum control. This VLAN keeps the dev/test environment sandboxed from the trusted systems while running efficiently on ARM-based low-power nodes. 📶 VLAN 3 – IOT & Guest Network The third VLAN is dedicated to IoT devices and guests, keeping them isolated from the rest of the network: WiFi is provided by Eero access points, handling guest devices and smart home gear. This VLAN houses: ESP32 sensors Smart cameras IoT plugs and lights A dedicated Raspberry Pi running Home Assistant, which orchestrates all smart automations This setup ensures that even if one IoT device is compromised, the rest of the network remains secure. Chapters 00:00 - Home Labs For Beginners 00:30 - Why Energy Is Important 02:02 - My home Diagram 02:43 - Home Lab Hardware 07:00 - VLans and Firewall Rules 12:28 - Low Power High Power Love 13:00 - My Home Lab Wrap Up My other Home Lab Videos ⚡ Why It Works This lab is designed to be low-power, cost-effective, and high-performance: The Cloud Gateway Ultra handles routing and firewall duties without drawing much power. Raspberry Pis are efficient and easily replaced or repurposed. The RTX 3060 PC only spins up for AI tasks or heavy workloads. Access points and switch PoE are fine-tuned to avoid waste. Whether you're new to home labs or looking to upgrade, this architecture gives you flexibility, isolation, and security on a tight power budget. 📺 Watch the full video to see the VLAN configurations, rack layout, and how it all ties together! 🛠️ Have questions? Drop them in the comments, and don’t forget to Like & Subscribe for more deep dives into networking, AI, and smart home automation! #homelab #selfhosting #networking #diy #raspberrypi