Project Objectives
The objective for the project is to have a functioning Ad blocker to reduce/remove the ads presented on apps like free games. A future objective is to remove and eliminate all ads on websites like YouTube without compromising user experience.
Components Used
• Router (any with internet connections)
• Ethernet cable (For connecting the Pi to the Router)
• VNC (For remote access)
• Raspberry pi 4 or 3
• MicroSD card (with Raspbian)
• Access to the admin controls of router
Picture or Schematic of the System
Setup
• Static IP
• Connect directly to router
• Can be connected to anything with DNS settings
Results
Video’s of Ad Blocker work on webistes:
Troubleshooting
Project Objectives
During the project, we ran into a few issues. The issues included having technical issues with getting the program to run because of the code itself was not working as intended. We fixed this issue by going into the code and editing the DNS records which we provided to allow the code to have bigger list of severs to block. However, this brought up another issue in which that we had conflicting DNS servers that should not have been in the blacklist and thus restricting the ability to use the site correctly. For this issue we went back into the records and found where we thought the address would be and tested the ones, we thought it could be adding them to the whitelist allowing them through. Our main goal for the project was to reduce or if possible, completely take away all Ads on YouTube but we soon found out that it would be nearly impossible because the task is like shooting a moving target because sometimes the target will be hit and block the add before it shows up but other times it doesn’t and allows the Ad to come through. This is a give and take because when trying to block them out entirely you also block out some key things that YouTube does like adding the video to already watched or adding videos to your recommendation tab.
Recommendations and/or Conclusions
For future modification we would like to get a working GUI that is very easy to use. Along those lines we would like to also make a chromium App that functions and does the same thing but not on a network scale more personal browser. The project was successful in its goal of removing all advertainments in applications that were riddled with them. However, it was not successful in our secondary goal of making removing all or most of the Ads on YouTube. Further testing will be required to create an array to expand the DNS list to reduce the Ads even further. Reason for the code not removing the YouTube ads is because the DNS servers that they use for ads is always changing and change very little but enough to not be in the list of DNS to blacklist thus having an array will filter out those discrepancies. This application was only limited to cellphones during our testing but can be expanded to anything with a DNS setting. Thus, not being limited to only cellular devices