How to protect your home systems using Pi-Hole

The Pi-Hole project is a free software project that makes it easy for people to protect their personal computers and devices from going to malicious sites or sending data to spyware or tracking services. It does this by constantly updating itself with lists of known malicious domain names discovered by security researchers and blocking your systems from going to those domains where they might get infected with malware. It's free and can run on a wide range of hardware or virtual machines, so there's really no reason not to use it to protect your systems. The information below can help get you started with it.

The Software

Pi-Hole.net

The Hardware

We recommend the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ because it works well as a fanless computer with no moving parts.

For storage the SanDisk Extreme MicroSD 32GB or larger.

We also recommend the see-through Zebra Classic Case from C4 Labs.

All of these items, or similar ones, can be purchased from the sites above or from resellers like Amazon or Ada's Technical Books.

The Official Documentation

Docs.Pi-Hole.net

Installation Tips

The following videos can help you if you have questions about any of the steps involved.

Step One

Downloading the Raspbian operating system and Pi-Hole software.

Step Two

Installing the Raspbian operating system onto your Raspberry Pi.

Step Three

Installing the Pi-Hole Software

Step Four

Configure your home router, or DHCP server, to use the Raspberry Pi for DNS. Your equipment configuration will vary.

Step Five

Viewing the Pi-Hole Dashboard