setup 11reel 412026-08-28comment CAR
Run a 35B model on a 300 euro computer (CarWatch setup)
CarWatch runs a 35B model on a 300 euro Raspberry Pi 5 rig, 3.5 tokens per second, no internet needed.
This is the parts list and the setup for CarWatch, the offline car assistant from the reel. Everything below is from the project's own README, checked on 28 August 2026.
What it actually does: a 35 billion parameter model runs on a small computer in the car and answers questions about that specific car, quoting the page number from the owner's manual. No internet, no cloud account, no subscription.
The parts
| Part | Spec | Why this one |
|---|---|---|
| Raspberry Pi 5 | 16GB RAM | The 8GB version cannot hold the model. This is the part people get wrong |
| Active cooling | Fan or active cooler | Not optional. The README says the chip throttles without it |
| Storage | microSD or NVMe, 32GB or more | The model file alone is 14.3GB |
| Power | Official 27W USB-C supply | Underpowering a Pi 5 causes throttling that looks like a software fault |
Total is about 300 euros. The software is AGPL, so it costs nothing.
The model
| Thing | Value |
|---|---|
| Model | Qwen3.6-35B-A3B |
| Quantisation | Unsloth UD-Q3_K_S, 14.3GB |
| Generation speed | 3.5 tokens/sec, roughly three and a half words a second |
| Prompt speed | 25+ tokens/sec |
| Sustained temperature | 65 C, with cooling |
| Knowledge source | the car's own 489-page owner's manual, with page citations |
Why it fits at all
The A3B in the model name means roughly 3 billion active parameters out of 35 billion total. Only a fraction of the model fires per token. That is the whole reason a 14.3GB file runs on a board this size.
What to expect, honestly
It is slow. Three and a half words a second means a paragraph takes most of a minute. If you are expecting ChatGPT's speed you will hate it.
The constraint is the product. It is not trying to be a general assistant. It answers questions about one car, from one manual, and that narrowness is why a model this size is useful on hardware this small.
Cooling is a hard requirement. Skip it and the chip throttles, and you will blame the model.
Scanned manuals need OCR first. The retrieval works on text. If your manual is a scan, that is a separate step before any of this.
The source
The project: https://github.com/ThinkOffApp/CarWatch
Every number on this page is from that README. If it has changed since 28 August 2026, trust the repo over this page.
Which car are you building it for?
Tell me in The Rabbit Hole and I will tell you whether your manual needs OCR first.
It is the room where I keep the parts that don't fit on a page like this: the full run of numbers, what broke the first time, and the ones that looked good and then didn't work at all.
Two catches, up front, because that's the rule here. It's private, so you have to be inside to read anything. And it's new, so you'd be early rather than joining something busy.
if you run it, tell me
the rabbit hole
It's free to join, and the course library is free too. Ask there and I answer in the open, so the next person with the same question finds it. There's an optional paid Premium tier for weekly office hours.
join the rabbit holePost in there what you ran it on and what you got, or reply to the DM. I read every one.