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Pi-hole advert blocker



  Clio 182
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.
 

ChrisR

ClioSport Club Member
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

ClioSport Club Member
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.
 
  Clio 182
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. (y)

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

ChrisR

ClioSport Club Member
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.
 
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

ClioSport Club Member
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.
 
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.
 


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