Using Raspberry Pi to block ads

Photo by Scott Graham on Unsplash

Behind some books on the bookshelf I use to hide my home networking equipment is a Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ loaded with software to make the device a Pi-hole: a black hole for advertising distribution and tracking methods. This article will show the setup process I used to restore some more of my screen space (and some privacy) by making the Pi-hole a DNS proxy for web browsing. I primarily use Mac OS for development and so some steps were easier to perform in the terminal. Don’t let that intimidate you if you’re not as familiar, these are very easy-to-understand commands.

Equipment

• Raspberry Pi 3
• 32 GB SD card
• additional computer

Steps

Install a compatible operating system on the Pi.
1: Using the appropriate imager on the additional computer, format the SD card with an image of Raspbian, the Linux distro flavored specifically for the Pi. Alternatively, the Raspbian ISO can be downloaded and flashed to the SD card using Etcher, which is ridiculously straightforward.

2: Before removing the SD card from the additional computer, create a file to enable SSH on boot. More detailed, alternative instructions can be found here. Creating a file called “ssh” with no extension will tell Linux to enable SSH. These…