Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by tastysandwich 1131 days ago 

  - Media center
  - Transmission seedbox
  - Zoneminder (security camera monitoring)
Ones I no longer use:

  - Pihole
  - Grafana dashboard of temperatures of other Pis
I also built an exhaust fan into a drawer so I could keep them all crammed in without overheating. Hence the Grafana dashboard above.

A few years ago I built a project that used wifi to count the number of devices in a given area.

You could set up a basic Linux distro on it, put video game emulators on it so they can experience all the old LucasArts classics.
1 comments
dyingkneepad 1130 days ago
Would you mind sharing with use why you no longer use it as a PiHole? Is there some major disadvantage or problem with it? I ask this because I've been considering getting a Pi for a Pihole.
link
tastysandwich 1128 days ago
Sure! Sorry for my delayed response.

To block ads when web browsing, I find adblockers more than adequate. Eg Brave Browser on Android, or the Ublock Origin addon on desktop.

The main reason I wanted Pihole was to block ads in other situations - eg Android apps. In particular, I wanted to watch a documentary on a free video app, but the number of video ads made it intolerable.

I found Pihole did not effectively block ads in Android apps, or ads in videos. I think they must serve the ads from the same server as their content, therefore rendering DNS blocking useless.

(I will go to extreme lengths to avoid watching video ads. In this case, I actually screen recorded the entire documentary on my phone, with the ads. I could then watch it later on, but skipping all the ads)

link