Is self-hosting worth the investment?
TL;DR
Definitely worth it. Even with a solid (not AI-focused) setup spending around €300, the return on investment is under a year, and the freedom you gain is hard to beat.
The journey begins
Sometime in mid-2022, I started playing around with the idea of reclaiming privacy and taking back ownership of my data and media. I began with a Raspberry Pi 4 and a 32GB microSD card. Now I’ve ended up with a mini PC, 16GB RAM, 2TB NVMe, and a solid home setup.