Mastering Network-Wide Ad Blocking: Integrating Pi-hole and AdGuard Home with Home Assistant

Elevating Network Control: Integrating Pi-hole & AdGuard Home with Home Assistant

In the quest for a truly robust and private smart home, managing your network's DNS (Domain Name System) is a crucial, often overlooked, step. Beyond just blocking annoying ads, a local DNS resolver like Pi-hole or AdGuard Home offers enhanced privacy, security, and a noticeable speed boost to your internet browsing. Integrating these powerful tools with Home Assistant elevates their utility, transforming them from static network services into dynamic, automatable components of your smart ecosystem.

This guide will walk you through integrating Pi-hole and AdGuard Home with Home Assistant, providing setup steps, insights into available entities, and practical applications for building a more reliable and intelligent smart home network.

Why Integrate?

• Centralized Monitoring: View real-time DNS queries, blocked ads, and client activity directly within your Home Assistant dashboard.
• Automated Control: Toggle ad blocking on/off, manage parental controls, or switch DNS filtering rules based on presence, time of day, or specific events.
• Enhanced Privacy & Security: Gain insights into what your devices are communicating with, identify suspicious activity, and enforce network-wide content policies.
• Streamlined Management: Control your entire smart home, including core network services, from a single interface.

Prerequisites

Before you begin, ensure you have an operational Pi-hole or AdGuard Home instance running on a dedicated device (e.g., a Raspberry Pi, a mini-PC, or a Docker container on your server). Both act as DNS servers that filter requests based on blocklists and custom rules.

Integrating Pi-hole with Home Assistant

The Pi-hole integration allows Home Assistant to connect to your Pi-hole instance and retrieve various statistics and control its filtering capabilities.

Setup Steps:

1. Obtain API Token: Log in to your Pi-hole admin interface (usually http://pi.hole/admin). Go to Settings > API / Web interface and copy the API token. You might need to enable it first.
2. Add Integration in Home Assistant:
   • Navigate to Settings > Devices & Services.
   • Click + Add Integration.
   • Search for Pi-hole.
   • Enter your Pi-hole's hostname or IP address (e.g., 192.168.1.10 or pi.hole).
   • Paste the API token you copied earlier.
   • Click Submit.
3. Home Assistant will now discover available sensors and a switch for enabling/disabling Pi-hole.

Available Entities:

• Sensors:
  • sensor.pi_hole_dns_queries_today: Total DNS queries.
  • sensor.pi_hole_ads_blocked_today: Number of ads blocked.
  • sensor.pi_hole_ads_percentage_blocked_today: Percentage of queries blocked.
  • sensor.pi_hole_domains_on_blocklist: Count of domains on blocklists.
  • sensor.pi_hole_unique_clients: Number of unique clients.
  • And more, depending on your Pi-hole version.
• Switch:
  • switch.pi_hole: Toggle Pi-hole's blocking functionality on/off.

Integrating AdGuard Home with Home Assistant

AdGuard Home offers a similar set of features to Pi-hole and also integrates seamlessly with Home Assistant.

Setup Steps:

1. Enable API Access: Ensure the AdGuard Home API is accessible. This is usually enabled by default. You will need the username and password for your AdGuard Home admin interface.
2. Add Integration in Home Assistant:
   • Navigate to Settings > Devices & Services.
   • Click + Add Integration.
   • Search for AdGuard Home.
   • Enter your AdGuard Home's hostname or IP address and the port (e.g., 192.168.1.11:3000).
   • Enter your AdGuard Home API username and password.
   • Click Submit.
3. Home Assistant will then populate sensors and switches from your AdGuard Home instance.

Available Entities:

• Sensors:
  • sensor.adguard_home_dns_queries: Total DNS queries.
  • sensor.adguard_home_blocked_filtering: Queries blocked by filtering.
  • sensor.adguard_home_blocked_by_safebrowsing: Queries blocked by safe browsing.
  • sensor.adguard_home_blocked_by_parental: Queries blocked by parental control.
  • sensor.adguard_home_average_latency: Average DNS response time.
  • sensor.adguard_home_rules_count: Number of filtering rules.
• Switches:
  • switch.adguard_home_protection: Enable/disable overall protection.
  • switch.adguard_home_parental_control: Toggle parental control.
  • switch.adguard_home_safesearch: Toggle safe search enforcement.

Practical Applications and Automations

With these integrations in place, the real power begins. Here are some ideas:

• Lovelace Dashboard Insights: Create a dedicated card showing daily blocked ads, total queries, and the current status of your DNS server. Use a mini-graph card for historical data trends.
• Temporary Disabling: Use an input boolean and an automation to temporarily disable ad blocking for a set period (e.g., 5 minutes) if a family member encounters a site that breaks with ad blocking enabled.
• Guest Network Automation: When a guest connects to your Wi-Fi (detected by router integration), automatically enable a stricter set of AdGuard Home rules or parental controls for devices on that specific network segment.
• Notification for Suspicious Activity: Create an automation that notifies you (e.g., via a mobile app notification) if a specific device on your network makes an unusually high number of blocked requests, or if it tries to access known malicious domains.
• Automatic Updates & Restarts: While not directly part of the integration, you can use Home Assistant's shell_command or network monitoring to alert you if your DNS server is offline, prompting you to investigate or restart it.

Best Practices for a Reliable Smart Home Ecosystem

Integrating network services requires careful consideration to maintain reliability and performance:

1. Dedicated Hardware: Run Pi-hole/AdGuard Home on dedicated, low-power hardware like a Raspberry Pi. Avoid running it directly on your main Home Assistant server unless it's a powerful machine, as resource contention can impact performance.
2. Redundancy: Consider setting up two DNS servers (e.g., two Raspberry Pis running Pi-hole) and configure your router or devices to use both. If one goes down, your network won't lose internet access. Alternatively, configure a public DNS server (like Google's 8.8.8.8) as a secondary fallback on your devices if your local server becomes unavailable.
3. Static IP Addresses: Assign a static IP address to your Pi-hole/AdGuard Home server to prevent network disruptions if its IP changes.
4. Router Configuration: Ensure your router is configured to push your Pi-hole/AdGuard Home's IP address as the primary DNS server to all connected devices via DHCP.
5. Backups: Regularly back up your Pi-hole or AdGuard Home configuration. Both services provide easy ways to do this.
6. Monitoring: Use Home Assistant's built-in monitoring (e.g., ping sensor, integration status) to ensure your DNS server is always online and the integration is connected.
7. Understand Blocklist Impact: Be aware that aggressive blocklists can sometimes break legitimate websites or services. Use Home Assistant's control switches to quickly toggle blocking if issues arise, and fine-tune your blocklists over time.

Conclusion

Integrating Pi-hole or AdGuard Home with Home Assistant transforms your ad blocker into an active, intelligent part of your smart home. From gaining deep insights into your network's activity to creating sophisticated automations for privacy and control, this combination empowers you to manage your digital footprint like never before. Embrace this powerful duo to create a faster, more secure, and truly smarter home network.