Review
(^82) July 2018 raspberrypi.org/magpi
Ads can
be blocked
on any
device and
even in apps
Pi Supply
Maker
Says
THE NETWORK-WIDE AD BLOCKER
illed as a black hole for
internet adverts, Pi-hole
is free and open-source
software for the Raspberry Pi.
While you could create your own
Pi-hole server, Pi Supply’s kit
comes pre-built and is almost a
plug-and-play device. Inside the
sleek, branded black case – also
available separately for £15 – is
a Pi 3 and 16GB microSD card
with Pi-hole pre-installed (in
Raspbian). You also get a power
supply, plus HDMI and Ethernet
cables. An online setup guide is
provided at pisupp.ly/pihole.
Initial setup involves wiring the
Pi-hole device to your router and
connecting it to a TV. While Pi-hole
is pre-installed, you need to set it
up for your network. A Terminal
command brings up a setup wizard,
which prompts you to input your
router’s IP address and set a static
IP for the Pi-hole. You can then
run the device as a headless server,
with a wired or wireless connection
to the router.
Enable ad blocking
The main way to enable network-
wide ad blocking is to set your
router’s DNS address to that of the
Pi-hole. However, some routers
(including ours) don’t permit
users to change the DNS setting.
One alternative is to disable the
router’s DHCP server and enable
one on the Pi-hole. This seemed
a little daunting, so we opted to
instead set the DNS address to
Pi-hole’s IP manually on each
device – a more flexible option.
We soon encountered a problem,
however: no webpages were
loading! After a lot of Googling and
head scratching, we eventually
found a setting in the Pi-hole’s
web interface: changing the
DNS listening behaviour to ‘all
interfaces’ instead of ‘eth0’ did
the trick (since our Pi-hole wasn’t
wired to the router). The web
interface is also very handy for
seeing how many web queries have
been blocked, viewing a query log,
and black/whitelisting any that
should be blocked/unblocked.
Last word
While setup wasn’t quite as
easy as we’d hoped – including
having to set a new password
to log in to the web interface
- the Pi-hole device worked
really well on the normally
ad-heavy sites we tried. Yay,
no more autoplay video ads!
Block annoying internet adverts using this pre-built Pi kit
B
PI-HOLE
FOSS
Alternatively, to
build your own
Pi‑hole server
with an existing
Raspberry Pi,
you can install
the free and
open‑source
Pi‑hole software.pi-hole.netRelated
Free
PI-HOLE
PI-HOLE
magpi.cc/mmLdQm
£80 / $107