Does anyone run their own AI service?
If so,
Which one?
What hardware?
Do you have a way to access it from outside or from a phone?
And, if you’re open to sharing, what do you do with it?
I know AI-enabling hardware is insanely expensive right now, but some of the smaller (<32GB) more efficient models (think deepseek- or qwen-based) don’t absolutely need specialized hardware to run and perform well enough for many purposes.
I am so aware of the absolutely abysmal privacy practices of basically all AI companies that I’m not comfortable using them to help me with web searches and the such, because there’s no way that all this information won’t be going into a profile. This makes me want to have my own “helper” service.
Very similar, but I’m using Gemma4 12b. I could run 26b but that would exhaust my vram after a short interaction. And ollama. Open WebUI + Home Assistant hooked up with it, a couple very basic scripts I threw together, and connected to Kagi.
I’m trying to get my folks off the Gemini/Google bandwagon for the privacy aspect, but also because it’s just cool from a tech geek perspective. For me, any questions throughout the day that I want info on, but not enough to do a deep-dive for an hour+, gets fed to Steve, my models name. Or I’ll use it as a springboard and then properly read the citations for more info. And I feed it HA automations when I get stuck scratching my head on an edge case or whatever - it’s alright but helps me explain what I want from the automation, and when it understands my goal, great, and when it doesn’t I reflect on what I have setup and can usually go ‘ah ha’ and fix the issue. It’s like a rubber ducky/pair programmer that you can both think is an idiot sometimes, but it doesn’t judge you when you’re the idiot.
What’s your rig?
Random Question, I’ve been trying to offload some of my stuff handled by claud to basically this exact setup. However one of the things I manage has a pair of MCP servers that are required. I might not be smart enough, but how do you get Qwen to use an MCP?
Pretty much my setup as well. Though I’m using qwen3.8 27b-Q4_K_M under ollama. Everything running with docker. Add nginx and either a domain+port forwarding or zerotier/tailscale you’ve got an app you can get to from outside your house.
Right now not sure how I’m going to leverage it not probably to streamline my self hosted stuff, help with config mgmt and documentation, web page summarization, etc. we’ll see how it does, just got it setup yesterday
In case you are unaware, frieds don’t let friends use ollama. The llama.cpp has become pretty much equally easy to use, plus since you use Docker there’s no need to compile anything.
Oh shit I wasn’t aware! Thanks for the heads up, I’ll swap to llama.cpp
I’ve got similar running on my RX 7600 XT. It is not a great experience for interactive use, but fine for async tasks. I’m also running nemo-speak for live local dictation and meeting transcription.
Yah doing similar on 5060ti.