# Preparing for a new house

I am about to purchase a house and really looking forward to it! This is a great opportunity to geek out on the networking I’ll put in, the home automation I’ll configure via Home Assistant and see what I will do to have technology make the family life easier.

I plan to share my activities here as much as I can while keeping privacy proper.

## Brainstorm ideas - Networking

I am looking to up my Ubiquiti Unifi game when I move in. I currently have a USG as well as a small 8-port 1Gbps switch with PoE and a U6-PRO AP. Since the house has two floors (ground and basement), I believe I might need two APs, but that remains to be seen. The reach of the antenna is pretty impressive.

I want to change my USG because well.. it’s getting old. Many suppliers also now offer >1 Gbps speeds where I’m at so that would be great to have a native solution that can distribute those speeds properly. I am looking to get the [cloud gateway ultra](https://techspecs.ui.com/unifi/unifi-cloud-gateways/ucg-ultra?subcategory=cloud-gateways-compact)
This little bad boy has a 2.5G WAN port, so at least I won't be blocked by a slower-than-my-ISP WAN connection hehe. I am also impressed by the price, it's really not that bad for what you're getting. 

## Brainstorm ideas - Home Automation

I'm definitely sticking to Home Assistant for my automation needs and I want to leverage it. Currently, in the appartment where I'm at, I run it on a virtual machine on my QNAP TS-670 Pro, but I believe I might switch to host it on a small computer OR a Raspberry Pi with an enclosure.

I'll also stick to Zigbee, Wifi and Bluetooth for my devices, I don't plan to get into Matter or Z-Wave yet. I already have quite a few devices, so we'll see how I integrate them in the new house. 

That's just a small little article as I didn't want to let go of this blog. I'm new to the whole blogging thing, but I always wanted to be a writer, and I feel like just documenting what I'll be doing might help others and future me if I don't remember how to do something.