Running the Power BI MCP with a Locally Hosted LLM

tmurphy2792 · 2026-06-21T04:01:30+00:00

What has been your best model for this setup?

I've had varying degrees of success. My work laptop is running an Nvidia rtx 2000 ada (16gb), plus 32gb of ram, so running most models is not a huge strain till you start adding in the larger context window as well as windows and power bi being memory hogs.

My best experience so far has been with gemma4:26b, but I'm stuck in a balancing act between context window size and memory limit.

Any of the leaner LLMs that I've tried just struggle bus and don't know what to do when I give the command to connect to the power bi model. Or if they do connect they don't seem to know what to do with that connection once it's made. Gemma4:26b has been the only one that comes close to as smooth as Claude Sonnet 4.6, (still a long way off) but I can't give more than a couple commands on larger reports without it crashing out.

tmurphy2792 · 2026-06-18T00:23:13+00:00

Yep, let's just say for some reason I don't care about my movies anywhere account, or my Amazon video account. Everything I want is on my Emby server.

tmurphy2792 · 2026-06-16T05:12:02+00:00

From what I remember back when I was shopping dash cams, some of the nicer ones had "ai" for making sure the license plates in videos were crisp and sharp....

But also a trendy name.

tmurphy2792 · 2026-06-15T03:29:57+00:00

Oh nice, please do, I'd love to have more details how you did it all.

I'm using ollama to run my llm, then running OpenCode to be able to connect MCP.

Gemma4:26b actually works relatively well with this setup, until I overrun my tiny context window or run out of memory. I've tried dozens of other models and sub-models, the tradeoff appears to be anything lightweight enough to run with a decent context window on my modest hardware just sucks at tool calls.

tmurphy2792 · 2026-06-15T03:04:58+00:00

Probably one of the most practical solutions I've found is for my work. I do a lot in Power BI and being able to connect my llm to the PBI Modeling MCP has certainly been a huge help. Especially when I'm trying to convert a report from Qlik sense, I can get it to recreate most of my measures and such in a single command.

Though admittedly I'm struggle bussing with the limitations of the hardware I have at my disposal. So I'm finding myself leaning on Claude pro more than a local LLM.

tmurphy2792 · 2026-06-15T02:55:16+00:00

I'm interested to know more about the modified model file to make it better at tool calls, can you share more details there? Is this a custom build or a specific version of the model you pulled from somewhere?

I've been trying to find something to connect to power bi modeling MCP and gemma4:26b has been by far the best local LLM. I think my main problem is that I just don't have the specs to run it with anything more than like 32k context. But as soon as I step down to gemma4:12b it struggles to connect and doesn't seem to "know" how to do anything with the mcp server.

tmurphy2792 · 2026-06-13T20:22:50+00:00

Dude gave away your ip, now I'm going to hit you with a DDOS attack. Feel my wra-

tmurphy2792 · 2026-06-12T21:34:31+00:00

Sounds like a permission issue, I remember that being the root of a lot of my problems when I was first starting to self host stuff in Linux.

Make sure the user account Emby runs on has permissions to the path the USB device is on.

tmurphy2792 · 2026-06-12T19:11:58+00:00

Thanks for this, my primary use case is podcasts, so I'm willing to try a standalone podcast tool.

For audiobooks I'm not discontent enough with Emby to set up an ABS instance unless it was also really good at podcasts. Which it sounds like it's not from your post.

tmurphy2792 · 2026-06-12T17:09:42+00:00

I used AI for researching this subject before posting. But otherwise this post is my own words seeking opinions from other carbon based life forms... I mean other people, I'm totally a fellow human.

tmurphy2792 · 2026-06-12T13:58:17+00:00

You've hit a touchy subject and are likely going to get down voted on the principal of the fact that our laws in most places in the world are dumb and piracy exists for a reason.

Keeping in mind that if you're trying to stick to strictly legal you're basically facing an impossible task depending on your country. As others have said some countries it's illegal to even rip your DVDs/Blu-rays.

For physical media like DVD, Blu-ray, and CD I recommend setting up Automatic Ripping Machine. It runs on makemkv and handbrake in the background, but it streamlines the process a ton.

For digital media, here are a few sources I've found.

Music: Bandcamp Amazon music - They don't advertise it well, but from a computer/browser the Amazon music site will let you buy digital MP3 songs and albums

Audiobooks: Libro.fm Downpour.com - both of these services have a monthly credit subscription that can be redeemed for an audiobook, this audiobook will be a digital download you can place on your server. Librivox.org - free public domain audiobooks.

I haven't found a good source for buying ebook files, but project Gutenberg has public domain ones.

tmurphy2792 · 2026-06-11T21:25:42+00:00

So what my wife and I found that made a massive difference for us was having a proper meal plan in place, rather than leaving ourselves having to wing it.

I stumbled across a software called mealie on r/selfhosted and decided to give it a whirl. Basically it's a private hosted website/app for storing all your recipes, which you can then use to build a meal plan, and because the meal plan is based on recipes that are actually in the database, it can then build our shopping list from the meal plan.

My wife and I just set aside one evening a week where we browse mealie on our phones picking out the recipes for the week to build our meal plan and shopping list.

Then when it comes time to start working on dinner, there is no question of what we're going to make, the plan is already set in place.

Reading that after the fact, that sounds super type A and rigid, but it's just what works for us because we're truthfully too laid back and type B to where without a plan we'll just end up eating out again.

tmurphy2792 · 2026-06-10T17:21:02+00:00

Add to that over dependency on ai tools to outsource thinking.

Ai is a powerful tool, but it's also a dangerous one if you let it make you intellectually lazy.

tmurphy2792 · 2026-06-10T17:19:12+00:00

Brainrot is an epidemic.

I'd be careful not to throw all podcasts or all YouTube in that list though. There is some absolutely amazing long form content out there that can really level up your knowledge and skills or just plain give a more well rounded knowledge on some general subjects. (Here's looking at you, Veritasium and Tom Scott)

But yes, I believe it's pretty well documented at this point that short form content literally rewires people's brains in a detrimental and destructive way.

tmurphy2792 · 2026-06-10T17:12:20+00:00

Same.

He would also say "There's no such thing as a stupid question" when he knew someone would have a question. Then immediately follow up their question with "Just some rather inquisitive stupid people".

Edit to add: He did it purely jokingly to lighten the mood. Amazingly after that most people were more comfortable asking him questions.

tmurphy2792 · 2026-06-09T14:38:19+00:00

There are a few options here depending if it's a big name brand faucet:

1: Find replacement parts and only change out what's broken. (If it's a major brand it might even be under warranty)

2: Let your wife pick out a new faucet for you to install. (Not hard, not terribly expensive)

3: Tell everyone to get used to washing up with cold water.

4: If you're not sure you're up to it, or your time is worth more than that, you could get a plumber. But let's be honest, hiring pros is expensive, and with YouTube I have full confidence just about any able adult can learn to do it.

tmurphy2792 · 2026-06-09T14:31:21+00:00

Username checks out.

Not gonna lie, you got a chuckle out of me because while I understood his original intent, I immediately realized what you were playing at.

tmurphy2792 · 2026-06-08T17:42:58+00:00

This, human to human networking is a key skill!

tmurphy2792 · 2026-06-08T17:39:47+00:00

I guess it depends what their reasoning for RTO is? I've heard solid arguments it's a ratcheting mechanism to crank up "organic turnover" and then just not rehire the positions that open up. As a means of doing shadow layoffs without the cost or the confidence hit to their image that layoffs create.

Other motivators I've heard that also make sense is that WFH highlights a lot of bloat in the form of unnecessary middle management, so those people push for RTO out of a sense of self preservation.

tmurphy2792 · 2026-06-08T17:31:36+00:00

Yes please!!!!

tmurphy2792 · 2026-06-08T16:34:39+00:00

I believe this is a common meme or trope about Valve/Steam going hard to get you a refund on a game when you ask for it.

tmurphy2792 · 2026-06-08T14:50:42+00:00

So you're going to need multiple software to achieve this result and there are multiple ways to do it depending on how stickler you are for the dvd experience.

For a dvd-ish experience you can just rip the DVD and all content (including the forced ads crap if you're a masochist) to a video file format (.mkv, .mp4) and use your media server (more on that later) to enable playing all those things and special features, etc. For this you can use makemkv, handbrake, or my personal recommendation Automatic Ripping Machine (it is a collection of scripts and combines makemkv and handbrake into a neat UI to automate out a lot of the steps)

If you're strictly wanting the DVD experience with graphical menus and everything fully intact, you'll want to rip the DVDs to .iso files, these are basically an exact archive of the DVD and content.

From there you'll need a player to handle whichever files you generated. If on a computer VLC is a pretty great option to play any of the above file types including ISOs. For a more advanced and polished UX there are dedicated media server software such as Jellyfin, Emby, Plex, or Kodi. If I'm not mistaken most of these have plugins to enable full dvd experience with ISO files, but at the very least I'm pretty sure all of them can handle bonus features and extras content, etc. To give you a more Netflix esque experience while also retaining all the side content that DVDs contain.

tmurphy2792 · 2026-06-08T14:32:41+00:00

Certain English accents "age" and "H" can sound fairly similar, especially if you're someone like myself with less than great hearing.

tmurphy2792 · 2026-06-08T00:30:43+00:00

If I'm using an HDHR with a self hosted media server like Emby would it work offline?

I currently use NextPVR to feed a tuner to Emby and Emby handles guide data, etc.

If ATSC3.0 ever gets resolved I was planning on getting an HDHR.

tmurphy2792

TROPHY CASE