Set up a car helper that works without internet

A Raspberry Pi in a car used a local model to answer manual questions and read live diagnostics, while some vehicle controls ran through Home Assistant.

Done with Custom agent· Advanced

What they did
They placed a Raspberry Pi 5 with 16 GB in the vehicle and used it to run Qwen3.6-35B locally with llama.cpp. The system listened for spoken questions, checked the car’s live OBD readings through a Bluetooth ELM327 adapter, and searched a 489-page owner’s manual so it could answer with page numbers. It also wrote into a chat room as an agent, and the repo says Home Assistant can handle lock and window commands in the cloud; AC preconditioning is only named as the next command to add.
How it went
The voice, manual, and OBD parts are reported as working on an actual car. Generation is around 3.5 tokens per second, and bringing the 14 GB model in from microSD takes about three minutes. The README does not mention train tickets, and the preconditioning plus agent-to-agent pieces are listed as available rather than shown.
Tips
A large model on a Pi will feel slow, especially when it is loaded from microSD. If you mainly want quick replies, a smaller model will respond faster but is better for simpler questions.

Try it yourself with Hermes Agent

Help me build a car helper that runs fully offline on a [Raspberry Pi model] with a local model. It should read live OBD data from my [car make/model/year] over a [Bluetooth OBD adapter] and answer questions using the owner’s manual at [manual file path], with page citations. It should also share updates in [chat app or room]. Before it does anything that could change the car, such as locking doors, opening windows, or turning on AC, show me the exact action and wait for my approval. Give me a working script and a test I can run with sample data before I connect to the car.

Fill in the [brackets]. Agents can make mistakes, so review anything before it is sent, paid or deleted.

Read the original on github.com ↗

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