Let’s throw together a completely cheap system for less than $200 (‘merican late 2025 fer reference) that can run a simple little Ai for some local research and development. I am not going to write a complete howTo. I’m sure if you found this, you’ve already been thinking about it, but I will throw some links here and there.

We should be looking to decouple some of our network dependencies as much as possible, and having access to some focused knowledge on small hardware could be helpful in medical emergencies and disasters. I have a smattering of first aid knowledge, and if I had a voice in the background with verified knowledge I could feel safer in a bad situation. That’s just a basic reference to the idea. It’s going to be interesting. A touchscreen powered mini computer running the ollama language model system using tinylama to start.

I have it with a local address, so these screenshots include my ssh dialogs with “it” :). This small device could actually power additional screens and has a 256G sd-card, so I gave it a some old ripped videos for testing. It’s not perfect, or an iPad replacement. Again, that’s not the point.

I know it’s ugly with the cardboard and tape, but that is exactly the point. This is just to show that you can play with Ai for pretty cheap and with pretty low power. I hope the BS and the hype changes so we can start doing some cool work.

My plans are actually on a very selfishly creative level, so for me this is a perfect place to start. A small low powered computer with storage, network access, and a screen that has all of the basic tools for programming and development. At this point I can build this Ai in a variety of ways, BUT I have constraints and limits that are worth exploring in areas of power.

As a reminder, this is open source hardware and software, so from my understanding the “cat” has been out of the bag for a very long time. From the chips to the code, I don’t think any of this is locked to any real intellectual property at this level anymore. Just don’t quote me.

Hardware:

• BeagleY-Ai
• Waveshare 10 inch touch screen
• GPIO Breakout cables

Software

• Debian Linux
• Ollama with tinylama for a brain

Cardboard prototype container – just there. priceless? And this build continues. Have fun!