Rich Hein writes about transforming an inexpensive mini PC into a private, local LLM system designed to index and search personal documents for his household. By using tools like Ollama, Open WebUI, and Syncthing, he created a way for family members to query their digital files—such as bills or manuals—using natural language from any device on the home network without sending sensitive data to the cloud.
- The setup uses Gemma 3 12B running via Ollama on an AMD Ryzen 5 7640HS mini PC.
- Syncthing is used to automatically sync a specific "AI-Search" folder across multiple devices in the house.
- A custom PowerShell script acts as a file watcher to automatically feed new files into Open WebUI's Knowledge Base via API.
- Current search speeds are approximately one minute per query due to using integrated graphics rather than a dedicated GPU.
- The setup uses Gemma 3 12B running via Ollama on an AMD Ryzen 5 7640HS mini PC.
- Syncthing is used to automatically sync a specific "AI-Search" folder across multiple devices in the house.
- A custom PowerShell script acts as a file watcher to automatically feed new files into Open WebUI's Knowledge Base via API.
- Current search speeds are approximately one minute per query due to using integrated graphics rather than a dedicated GPU.
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