Any Pi-hole users here?

Rev Leon Lonnie Love

Rev Leon Lonnie Love

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I've been meaning to get into this for a while but keep putting it off. You need a raspberry Pi to set it up, right? Is it even necessary?
 
Rice N Beans

Rice N Beans

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Rev Leon Lonnie Love said:
I've been meaning to get into this for a while but keep putting it off. You need a raspberry Pi to set it up, right? Is it even necessary?
Click to expand...

It really depends on the goals.

I'm sure my initial post here wasn't clear enough, but if someone just wants some network-wide AdBlock (and "bad sites" that serve malware), they should use AdGuard's DNS servers. You drop the IP addresses into your router's DNS settings and that's all there is to it. Alternatively, you can do this per device where you are allowed to change DNS settings.

If you want a bit more granularity with what gets blocked, a system like OpenWRT on the router + Simple Adblock package function very similarly to how the browser ones work. This is what I use. I get more specific blocking capabilities and I don't need to set up my own DNS capabilities.

If you want far more control, making peeking into lookups easier then Pi-Hole or AdGuard Home (for something visually more toned down) are the more extensive options.
 
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Rev Leon Lonnie Love

Rev Leon Lonnie Love

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Got an Orange Pi 3 coming in and will finally set this up later this week :ehh:

Had to get this instead of the raspberry pi because all online official shops are soldout and Amazon price gougers are selling them for over $100 :scust:


How effective is this on a Smart TV? Got one with Google TV software but havent allowed it to connect to a wifi network yet. Do them youtube ads slip through often or will I need to just sideload an alternative youtube app ?
 
TripleAgent

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yeah, I think i'll just sideload this on the TV instead just to be safe: GitHub - yuliskov/SmartTubeNext: Ad free app for watching tube videos on Android TV boxes



Let me know if that works. I never got around to trying it. I watch all my YouTube on my laptop (pi-hole) or phone (YT Revances), so none there
 
Rev Leon Lonnie Love

Rev Leon Lonnie Love

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TripleAgent said:
yeah, I think i'll just sideload this on the TV instead just to be safe: GitHub - yuliskov/SmartTubeNext: Ad free app for watching tube videos on Android TV boxes



Let me know if that works. I never got around to trying it. I watch all my YouTube on my laptop (pi-hole) or phone (YT Revances), so none there
Click to expand...
i'll try it out tomorrow and let you know. If you have access to a browser on your TV, you can use Invidious to watch youtube content without ads or any other invidious instances: Select instance - Invidious
 
Rev Leon Lonnie Love

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TripleAgent said:
yeah, I think i'll just sideload this on the TV instead just to be safe: GitHub - yuliskov/SmartTubeNext: Ad free app for watching tube videos on Android TV boxes



Let me know if that works. I never got around to trying it. I watch all my YouTube on my laptop (pi-hole) or phone (YT Revances), so none there
Click to expand...

So I got an update: The Orange Pi 3 LTS came through yesterday but only got to setup things today. It came with a nice black case. This is the one I got in particular:

Luckily for me a 15GB sd card on my phone and just used that to flash the ubuntu jammy img from here: Orange Pi - Orangepi . The Orange Pi has an sd card slot on so I didnt need to use a USB sd card reader.

I could have just used the 8GB MMC internal memory to flash the image but didn't bother with it for the sake of flexibility.

Once the installation was finished I took an HDMI cable laying around to connect it to my monitor to login as a user. Afterwards I connected to the network via the terminal using the nmtui command. Once it was connected I went to the router settings on the browser to get its ip address and set that as a static ip for the orange pi. Then I just disconnected the HDMI cable and ssh'd into the device using my main laptop and then used the terminal to install pi-hole using the instrcutions on its web page.

Then proceeded to install pi-hole by following the instructions on its webpage. That was a painless process and everything worked and I was able to load the dashboard and then changed the DNS server of my PC and smart TV :ehh:. I will ad more blocklists from this page later on: The Big Blocklist Collection

After that I went and sideloaded the ad-free youtube app on my TV called SmartTubeNext (posted its link a few posts prior). This was way simpler than I realised. I did from my laptop by just connecting to the TV via the adb command on the terminal. After downloading the apk file from the github page I posted, I installed to the TV via my laptop terminal following these instructions: How To Sideload Apps On Your Android TV (2021)?

And....voila! The app is smooth and works intuitively just like the original youtube app but with not a single ad in sight :blessed: :blessed:

The only annoyance with this setup is that I realized that my VPN doesn't play well with Pi-Hole. I have to deactivate it everytime I try to login to the dashboard or if I ssh into the orange Pi :martin:. Even if I used the pi-hole ip as the custom DNS of my VPN, it just wont budge. Imma have to research how to get this working later.

If yall got any questions regarding my setup i'll be happy to answer where I can :ehh:
 
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