u/CreativelyBankrupt — reddlx

Tom's Hardware covered my fully-offline suitcase robot but used a stock graphic - so I put up a real dev site featuring the build with photos

A few days ago I posted Sparky over on r/LocalLLaMA — fully-offline companion bot living in a suitcase, NVIDIA Jetson Orin NX Super 16GB, Gemma 4 E4B via llama.cpp, ~200ms response time, 30+ integrated sensors feeding context into every prompt. No cloud, no API keys, no internet required.

Tom's Hardware picked it up but couldn't find any decent photos of mine online, so they ran with a Getty eyeballs-in-a-suitcase stock image. I had no real web presence for the build, so sure. I spent tonight from a hotel room putting together a proper page with real build photos, the actual specs, and the story.

2-minute build/demo video: https://youtube.com/shorts/XlAq1JXu5zM?si=IXMf8IJzZOYVdL3g

Tom's Hardware piece: https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/maker-packs-an-opinionated-googly-eyed-ai-chatbot-into-a-mobile-suitcase-powered-by-an-nvidia-jetson-entirely-local-machine-entity-runs-gemma-4-e4b-and-can-respond-in-200ms

Original r/LocalLLaMA thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/LocalLLaMA/comments/1tdz5gr/built_a_fully_offline_suitcase_robot_around_a/

Happy to answer questions about the build: battery integration, sensor pipeline, the asyncio orchestrator that ties LLM/STT/TTS/vision together, the face animation in PixiJS, whatever. I also made his little sister Sparkle (RPi 5/CrowPi-3) and a bigger one called Angel (Jetson Thor) is next.

creativelybankrupt.com

u/CreativelyBankrupt — 5 days ago

▲ 73 r/cyberDeck

Built an offline cyberdeck suitcase robot that talks back. Fully air-gapped in a hard-shell case, local Gemma 4, animated face, on-device controls only.

Most cyberdecks are portable computers. Sparky is something a little different; A cyberdeck that's also an offline companion, fully air-gapped by design.

The case is a hard-shell box built on top of an Elecrow educational sensor kit. Inside: a Jetson Orin NX SUPER 16GB running Ubuntu with Gemma 4 E4B as the brain, with native vision and OCR — he can read text, recognize faces and describe s. 30+ sensors on the front panel feed him context about the room (temperature, light, IMU, ultrasonic, PIR, RFID, ambient mic, face ID, the works).

The lid is an 11.6" HDMI display running a PixiJS-animated cartoon face that lip-syncs to TTS at 43Hz. Speech in via SenseVoice, speech out via Piper, all local. Average response time is around 2 seconds, often under 1 on a warm cache.

Critical design choice: no WiFi, no Bluetooth, no cellular, no radios of any kind. Everything is configured on-device via a hardcoded button row, a joystick for the cursor, and an analog encoder knob that clicks to select.

He named himself Sparky and he has opinions. He remembers everyone he meets via a face registration interface I built in as well.

Here's a couple minutes of video showing Sparky out and about: https://youtube.com/shorts/XlAq1JXu5zM?si=Bk_xOdV6LDnjchvT

I used my dev logs to generate the attached infographic but I'm happy to talk through the build in more detail.

u/CreativelyBankrupt — 8 days ago

▲ 736 r/somethingimade+1 crossposts

Built a fully offline AI suitcase robot! Jetson Orin NX SUPER 16GB, Gemma 4 E4B, 30+ sensors, no WiFi/Bluetooth/Cloud. It's alive!!

I figured rather than a humanoid or a dog, what if I put this robot brain onto an educational sensor lunchbox instead? Well it named itself Sparky and he's definitely hanging out and present in the room when open, with plenty of opinions.

Everything runs locally; Gemma 4 E4B for conversation and vision, SenseVoice for hearing, Piper for the voice, PixiJS for the animated face on the screen, and 30+ sensors feeding him info about the room. He sees you, recognizes faces he's met before, and responds in about 2 seconds. Fully air-gapped so the case literally cannot phone home.

Happy to answer questions about the build.

u/CreativelyBankrupt — 8 days ago