Setting Up A Pi-hole Network Ad Blocker On A Raspberry Pi Zero W, Step by Step

if you haven't heard of parhol it's a clever piece of software which acts as a network-wide ad blocker without the need for browser plugins or any other software on your computers and mobile devices it enables you to block ads on websites ads and apps on mobile devices and even your smart tv regardless of the software they're running powhole also improves your network speed because the ads are blocked before they are downloaded this also saves on data if you're on a limited data plan a web interface lets you interact with your powerhole and view stats on your network traffic you can find out a bit more about what powell can do through the link in the video description now that you know what powerhole is let's have a look at how to set one up on your home network step by step if you're running a large network with lots of users and traffic then the best device to use would be one of the raspberry pi 3 or 4 models with an ethernet connection to your router but for a smaller home network with less than 50 devices and only a couple of users online at the time a 0w works perfectly i've been using one for around a month now you're going to need a raspberry pi 0w a micro sd card of at least 16 gigabytes and something to put the pi in to protect it you can usually buy these kits online for around thirty to fifty dollars which includes everything you need even a power supply although you can buy the power loan for as little as ten dollars if you do some searching you won't need a mouse keyboard or monitor for this as we'll be using another computer on the network to set the powerhole up plug your microsd card into your computer don't worry about formatting it yet we'll get to that in a minute start by downloading the raspberry pi imager on your computer this is a fairly new tool but it's one of the easiest to use you just select the raspberry pi operating system you need which in our case is raspberry pi os light and then select the sd card you want to write the image to click on routes and let the tool do the rest it'll write the image check it and then eject the sd card [Music] there's a bit more to do on the sd card before we're done on the computer so you'll need to plug it in again to access it you might get a couple of windows pop up and one which says you need to format the cart in order to use it just ignore these and close them don't format the card again there should be one readable partition on the card called boot you should be able to open this partition and see a number of files in it we need to add two files to this directory one which tells the power hard to connect to your network and the other to enable ssh so that you can access it over the network download the network settings template which i've linked to and open it in a basic text editor like wordpad in the network settings section you need to add your local wi-fi network name next to ssid and your network password next to psk you can also change your country code at the top if you'd like this can be set up later though save and close the file now change the extension of the file from txt c click yes if you're given a warning now copy this file into your boot directory that's the first one done now we just need to add the ssh file create a new text file and change its name to ssh and remove the extension so the file should just be a blank file called ssh with no extension once you've got both of these files on your card you can eject and remove it plug the sd card into your power and then put it in the case [Music] plug the power cable in and wait a few seconds for it to boot up now you need to figure out your parse assigned ip address one of the easiest ways to do this is by logging onto your router's admin page there are often details on how to do this on the label of your router if you haven't done it before depending on how complex your router software is you may need to do some exploring you'll need to find a page which lists all of the devices currently connected to the network along with the rp address this is usually called a dhcp table note the rp address assigned to your part while you're logged in it's worth setting this rp address up as a static rp so your router always assigns the same address to your powerhole this is important and you'll see why in a bit again all routers are a bit different so you'll need to do some digging if you don't know how to set up a static rp on your router if you can't find the option try googling your router's model and the word static rp and you should find some information now that you've got your pars rp address we can access it over the network you'll need to install a terminal emulator like party to access your pi's terminal enter your power's rp address and then click open to attempt to connect to the part now you'll need to log into your part the default username is par and the password is raspberry you'll want to change these as soon as possible so it's a good idea to run the configuration tool first this tool lets you change a number of settings on your part as a start you should change your default username your password and make sure that you got the correct regional settings selected [Music] once you've done this you can move on to installing powerhole by typing in the following command the power will start downloading and installing the software i've sped this part up it does take a couple of minutes to run through and you'll then get to the following page to guide you through the powerhole setup for the most part you can just run through the default selected options and hit ok for each [Music] you might want to change your upstream dns provider if you'd like [Music] also make sure that the rp address listed is the one which you set as a static rp for your part [Music] it'll then run through another setup process and you'll finally get an installation complete display [Music] take notes of the admin web page password as you'll need this to log on to the pi at a later stage to view the detailed statistics and change any settings you can now close your terminal connection test if pile is running by going to your browser and typing in the rp address of your part along with a forward slash and admin you should see a page like this show up you'll notice that no queries have been received or blocked yet because the router isn't directing traffic through the pile just yet there's one last thing to set up you'll need to log back into a router and find your dns settings page here you'll need to set up your powerhole's rp address as the primary dns server if your router has to have a secondary dns server then type the same address into that field as well click on save and you may need to reboot your network devices to take effect if you go back to your powerhole dashboard you should now see requests coming through and add queries being blocked if you log into your powerhole using the admin password that was created during setup you should have more access to the network statistics and see detailed logs you'll also be able to change settings add or remove domains on the block list and reboot or turn off your part remember that if you turn off your part and your router's primary and secondary dns server are set to your power's rp address you'll no longer have access to the internet until your pi is back online some routers have a usb port on them which has enough power to supply an external hard drive this is usually enough to drive a raspberry pi 0w as well so you can ensure that they're always on together this card is just the starting point to get your powerhole up and running there's a lot more that can be done using powhole once you're comfortable with it let me know if you've used powerhole in the comments section thanks for watching please remember to like this video if you enjoyed it and subscribe for more tech and electronics projects tutorials and [Music] reviews you

Channel: Michael Klements

Views: 133,419

Keywords: raspberry pi, pi, raspberry pi zero, pi zero, pi zero w, raspberry pi zero w, wireless, wifi, lan, network, router, pi-hole, pihole, pi hole, ad blocker, network ad blocker, adverts, block adverts, headless, ssh, raspberry pi os lite, raspberry pi os, raspberry pi utility, putty, installation, install

Id: jkd3jmHS2hs

Length: 9min 10sec (550 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 02 2020