Build a home helper hub: offline Wikipedia and AI for every phone in the house

The short answer

A "home helper hub" is a small, quiet computer that holds your offline library and AI chat, plus a travel router that makes its own Wi-Fi. Anyone in the house joins that Wi-Fi and opens two web pages on their phone. No app to install and no internet needed.

This guide is more technical than most of ours, but every step is a copy-and-paste command. If you would rather start simpler, read the laptop version first.

What you need

Offline helper

Home AI

Home AI computer

Beelink · SER9 Max, AMD Ryzen AI 7 H 350, 32 GB, 1 TB

A small, quiet computer that runs everyday AI models and the offline library for the whole house, with no internet.

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Offline helper

Home AI

Home AI Wi-Fi box

GL.iNet · GL-MT3000 Beryl AX

Makes a private Wi-Fi in your home with no internet needed, so every phone can reach the Home AI computer and the offline library.

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• A portable SSD or the mini PC's own storage for the library files. The 1 TB drive fits all of it.
• A short network cable (usually included with the router).
• A monitor and keyboard for the first setup.

For the AI chat, pick a mini PC with 16 GB of memory.

Step 1: Install the operating system

Install Ubuntu from ubuntu.com using a USB stick, or keep Windows. The commands below are for Ubuntu. Do all downloads on your normal home internet first.

Step 2: Offline library with kiwix-serve

sudo apt update
sudo apt install kiwix-tools
mkdir -p ~/library

Download your files from the Kiwix download listing into ~/library. Sizes at the time of writing: full English Wikipedia with pictures is about 119 GB, the no-pictures version about 49 GB, and the WikiMed medical file about 1.7 GB. See the laptop guide for the full list.

Test it:

kiwix-serve --port=8080 ~/library/*.zim

On the same machine, open http://localhost:8080. You should see your library. Press Ctrl+C to stop it.

Step 3: AI chat with Ollama and Open WebUI

Install Ollama (the official Linux installer from ollama.com), then download a model:

curl -fsSL https://ollama.com/install.sh | sh
ollama pull qwen3:8b

The Qwen3 8B model is about 5.2 GB. Use a smaller one such as llama3.2 if your PC is slow.

Open WebUI gives you a chat page. Per its quick-start, install Docker (sudo apt install docker.io), then run:

sudo docker run -d -p 3000:8080 --add-host=host.docker.internal:host-gateway -e OFFLINE_MODE=true -e ENABLE_VERSION_UPDATE_CHECK=false -e RAG_EMBEDDING_MODEL_AUTO_UPDATE=false -v open-webui:/app/backend/data --name open-webui --restart always ghcr.io/open-webui/open-webui:main

The Open WebUI page notes that if Ollama runs on the host and Open WebUI runs in Docker, Ollama must listen on 0.0.0.0. Do that with:

sudo systemctl edit ollama

Add these two lines, save, then restart:

[Service]
Environment="OLLAMA_HOST=0.0.0.0"

sudo systemctl restart ollama

Open http://localhost:3000, create the first account (that account is the admin) and pick your model.

Step 4: Start everything on boot

Ollama's installer sets it up as a service. Docker starts the Open WebUI container again after reboot because of --restart always. For Kiwix, make a service:

sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/kiwix.service

Paste this, replacing YOURNAME with your username:

[Unit]
Description=Kiwix offline library
After=network.target

[Service]
ExecStart=/usr/bin/kiwix-serve --port=8080 /home/YOURNAME/library/wikipedia_en_all_maxi.zim /home/YOURNAME/library/wikipedia_en_medicine_maxi.zim
Restart=always

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Use your real file names. Then:

sudo systemctl enable --now kiwix
sudo systemctl enable docker

Step 5: Connect the travel router

1. Plug the router's power in. Set its Wi-Fi name and a strong password on its admin page.
2. Plug the mini PC into one of the router's LAN ports with a cable.
3. In the router's settings, give the mini PC a fixed address (a "DHCP reservation"). Say it is 192.168.8.50. Many travel routers use addresses starting 192.168.8.; check yours.
4. From a phone on that Wi-Fi, open http://192.168.8.50:8080 for the library and http://192.168.8.50:3000 for the AI chat.
5. Write both addresses on a card and tape it to the router.

Step 6: Test with the internet unplugged

The router's internet (WAN) port should have nothing plugged in. Reboot the mini PC and wait a few minutes. Join the Wi-Fi from a phone and open both pages. Search for "tourniquet", then ask the AI a short question. If anything fails, fix it while you can still look things up.

Powering it in a blackout

A mini PC with an Intel N100 chip is usually measured at roughly 7 to 12 watts when idle and about 20 to 30 watts under heavy load. See ServeTheHome (about 10.5 to 12 W idle) and Igor's Lab (7.4 W idle, 24.7 W peak). Your PC may use more.

The Home AI computer in our Family Kit has a faster AI chip than an N100, so expect it to use more while it is answering and little when idle. As a rough example, a hub averaging 15 watts plus a router at a few watts is about 20 watts total. A 1 kWh portable power station could run that for a day or two, even allowing for losses. That is our rough arithmetic, not a measurement, so check with a plug-in watt meter.

Power & light

Portable power station (about 1 kWh, runs a fridge)

EcoFlow · DELTA 3 Classic

It keeps your fridge, phones, lights and Wi-Fi running for hours when the grid is down, with no fumes, so it is safe indoors.

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Run a fridge and the hub from the same station only if you have the spare capacity. See running a fridge on a portable power station.

Be honest about the AI

It can be wrong. For health, use WikiMed and your first-aid book, and call 911 when phones work.

Next steps

• Learn the basics first in the laptop version.
• Charge phones from the same station: keep phones charged.
• See the Family Kit, which includes the hub parts.
• Plan for other ways to reach family: communicate when phones are down.