By By Tom Fenton03/30/2026
Publication Date: 2026-03-30 00:00:00
How-To
Running AI on a Raspberry Pi, Part 1: Overview
In a recent
article, I looked at the Raspberry Pi 500+ and found it more than
adequate for desktop use. This got me thinking about whether, with
its quad-core BCM2712 (2.4GHz A76) processor, 16GB of RAM, and, maybe
most importantly, a 256GB NVM drive, I could use it to run and
learn more about AI. A quick Google search showed that others
have used it for this purpose and that a few AI projects have used it
as a platform. Since the Pi 500+ is based on the more popular Pi 5, I
will use that model’s name interchangeably in this article.
People using it
to run AI locally surprised me, as I usually think of AI projects
running on powerful computers in massive, power-hungry data centers.
After a little more research, I found that edge AI, using smaller,
low-powered systems, is in use and growing in popularity.
Before diving
into my attempts to run AI on my Pi, I want to use this article to
set the stage on the terms and technologies used in AI.
Overview of LLM, RAG, on a Pi
The heart of
AI is its use of Large Language Models (LLMs). LLMs, such as
OpenAI’s GPT, Google’s PaLM, Qwen, and others, have
revolutionized how computers understand and generate human language
and, more importantly, how we do our work.
When…
