I Revived the First Raspberry Pi Model B (2011) as an AI Sandbox.
Most AI frameworks assume GPU farms. This one assumes you have
an SD card, a coffee, and curiosity.
The Raspberry Pi Model B was the first commercially successful
single-board computer launched in 2011 for $35 with 256 MB RAM.
Almost 15 years later, I built Datapizza-AI PHP on it — an ultra-minimal
educational framework that teaches how RAG, embeddings, vector search,
and AI agents work using pure PHP on vintage hardware.
Why?
- Prove that understanding beats horsepower
- Run on the original RPi hardware from 2011 (256 MB RAM, ~3 watts)
- See every API call, every cosine distance, every decision
- Learn AI without Python, without Docker, without dependency hell
Architecture:
- API-first embeddings (OpenAI, DeepSeek, Anthropic)
- Local vector store (plain JSON)
- Cosine similarity in pure PHP
- RAG pipeline, agents, memory, tools
- Everything hand-coded, readable, hackable