Pi-hole advert blocker

[Pistachio]

Anyone use it? Does it have to be installed on a raspberry pi?

I'm looking for a way to block the ads on my samsung tv. It annoys me every time I use it

 

[F12 Josh]

I've got one on a Raspberry Pi Zero just plugged into the router and then I changed the DNS on each device to point to it.

It works very well on the tablet, nearly all ads blocked on websites. It did struggle with ads on the built in YouTube on my TV, I never really fiddled with it though. Likewise ads when casting from ITV Player do still appear. I'm sure you can add some sites in the to blocked list though to stop that.

 

[Pistachio]

Did you need an ethernet adaptor cable for the zero?

 

[ChrisR]

I’ve had a pi 3 something or other running this for a while now, works nicely.

Doesn’t have to run on a pi just any Linux based system really, could probably run it on a NAS either natively or under docker for example I’d imagine, or just on a VM.

Have mine running DHCP as the stupid BT smart hub thing doesn’t let you change what DNS servers are dishes out, so disabled DHCP there and have the pi doing it (may change the router at some point but for ISP provided kit it’s actually not bad on the whole).

Works well, wife hated it as it blocked some things from working and it doesn’t exactly give you an indication without logging into the thing, so set her devices manually to use a different set of DNS servers, but does the job nicely for everything else.

 

[ChrisR]

Also on the Zero front, I don’t use one but of the people I know who have a lot just use them over wifi.

The latency isn’t huge to give a noticeable hit to web browsing speeds.

 

[White16valver]

This thread was quite interesting on PH - the AdGuard thing sounds quite useful but I'm always cynical of something that is free...

(Gradually) going 'off grid'? - Page 1 - Computers, Gadgets & Stuff - PistonHeads UK

The link to what Google and Facebook have on you is worrying.

 

[F12 Josh]

Did you need an ethernet adaptor cable for the zero?

Yes, I got an ethernet/USB hub thing and it's plugged into the router for power as well, nice and neat.

Just looked at the admin page for it, blocked nearly 35% of my total web traffic so it's doing something!

 

[ChrisR]

I still need to sit and work out how best to get the Pihole to syslog out, or some other mechanism of getting the data, the requests so I can play about with the data in some security software I play about with.

 

[VenomUK]

I keep reading about these Pi machines, what do people use them for?

 

[Crayola]

I keep reading about these Pi machines, what do people use them for?

Anything and everything

Just don't try and use them for multiple cameras/cctv as ours is having a bad time trying to display 4 feeds haha. We're gonna upgrade to a NUC very shortly

 

[The Psychedelic Socialist]

Yep, I've been running a pihole at home and at work for a while now. Brilliant piece of kit.

Also use our home one as the local DHCP server which helps with naming in the logs.

 

[Pistachio]

Man this thing is not user friendly at all. Maybe I'm just a noob! Finally got it working though. My samsung tv is desperately trying to load up ads but over 400 have been blocked in an hour or so. That is ridiculous! That wasn't even using any apps. Just watching freesat!

I really wanted it to block youtube ads on my phone primarily but it just doesn't work. It uses so many sites to load ads! I kept adding them to the blacklist but eventually it gets to the point where thumbnails don't load. Then the whole app stops working. I'm pretty disappointed with that. I'll just keep using Vanced

Youtube on my tv seems to have fewer ads. I've only had one ad so far after spamming through a load of videos

Weirdly my cheapo Shenzhen wifi camera has had 34 queries blocked


What I don't get is that adblocker on my pc can block 100% of youtube ads causing no issues at all. Isn't there a way pi hole could do something similar?

Still testing with amazon prime video

 

[ChrisR]

Weirdly my cheapo Shenzhen wifi camera has had 34 queries blocked


What I don't get is that adblocker on my pc can block 100% of youtube ads causing no issues at all. Isn't there a way pi hole could do something similar?

No surprise there that a cheap Chinese camera is doing something dodgy

As for why PC is doing it and pihole not, the pihole is just sink-holing DNS requests for sites on your blacklists, the PC software will likely be doing more that just that.

Plus side with pihole is as can use it as you’ve found with most devices as long as you can get them to use it for DNS.

Risk with software ad blockers can be that they have a lot of access on your system, so you really have to trust them to use them.

Browser plugins can have a scary amount of permissions on your browser.

 

[Pistachio]

The Chinese camera is due to be replace anyway. Ideally with some sort of floodlight camera. But I'm not paying £200 for a Ring one.


It would be interesting to know how the adblock app manages it with youtube. Ideally I would like to get rid of that, if pi hole could take care of everything.