Pi-Hole OLED Status Screen

This post shows how I added an OLED status screen to my Raspberry Pi based Pi-Hole system.

Pi-Hole is a network wide advert blocker that you can run on a Raspberry Pi. It runs well on all Pi models and is an ideal project for older hardware. You can read more about it on the official Pi-Hole site.

Having setup Pi-Hole on a Raspberry Pi B+ I wanted a way to add a display so I could quickly check it was working. So I added a cheap 0.96″ OLED display and a momentary switch. The switch allows the display to show additional detail as required. The LED is there to add a nice coloured glow to the box but of course this optional.

OLED Status Screen Hardware Setup

The hardware requirements are fairly basic.

• Raspberry Pi (any model but ideally you want an Ethernet port)
• SD card (8GB or larger recommended but 4GB will work)
• Power supply
• Network connection
  • Ethernet cable
  • or on-board WiFi
  • or USB WiFi dongle
• Monitor (optional)
• Keyboard (optional)
• Pi case (optional)

The status screen and switch upgrade require :

• OLED screen with I2C interface [eBay] [AliExpress]
• Momentary switch [eBay] [AliExpress]
• Jumper cables to connect screen to the GPIO header
• LED and resistor (optional)
• Bezel or mount for screen (optional)

Pi-Hole Installation & Setup

Installing Pi-Hole is fairly straightforward. I don’t really want want to replicate the procedure here. Instead I will provide a summary of what I did with appropriate links to additional guides. Depending on your preference you can either use SSH or a keyboard and monitor to perform the setup.

• Create a fresh Raspbian SD card with “Raspbian Lite” image and Etcher [guide]
• Add empty text file named “ssh” to boot partition to enable SSH [guide]
• Power-up Pi with new SD card
• Change the default password to something sensible [guide]
• Run “sudo apt update” followed by “sudo apt upgrade”
• Get IP address of Pi by either :
  • running ifconfig on the Pi
  • looking in your router settings
  • using a network scanner
• (optional) configure your router to always assign the same IP address to your Raspberry Pi
• Follow one of the install procedures described on the Pi-Hole GitHub page. I used the “One-Step Automated Install”

Screen and Switch Wiring

The switch was wired directly to the GPIO header using jumper wires and then stuck onto the lid with two part epoxy glue.

The screen, switch and LED were wired up as shown below :

The screen was powered from a 3.3V pin and the LED was powered from a GPIO pin.

OLED Screen Setup

OLED screens using the I2C protocol are fairly easy to hook up as you can use jumper cables to connect directly to the GPIO header. The procedure for adding one to your Pi and getting the libraries installed can be found in my How to use an OLED display module tutorial.

Make sure you can run the example Python scripts and your screen is working.

Switch Hardware

The switch can be connected directly to the GPIO header. I connected it across GPIO21 (Pin 40) and Ground (Pin 39). When the switch is pressed it will pull GPIO21 to ground and activate the “button_pressed” function.

Download Script Files from Github

To get the script files navigate to your home directory:

cd ~

and then clone the project repository using:

git clone https://github.com/RPiSpy/pi-hole-screen.git

This will create a folder named “pi-hole-screen”.

PIP Install

We’ll need to use pip so install using the command below:

sudo apt install python3-pip

Python Virtual Environment

To create a Python 3 virtual environment we must first ensure “venv” is installed:

sudo apt install python3-venv

To create an environment in the new folder named “venv” use:

cd pi-hole-screen

and then:

python3 -m venv venv

This creates a self-contained Python 3 system. Activate it using:

source venv/bin/activate

You should notice the name of the virtual environment appear in front of your command prompt.

While activated any Python libraries that are installed will be installed in this virtual environment and not interfere in your default Python installation.

Note: We created a Python 3 environment so going forward any use of “Python” will automatically refer to Python 3.

Python Module Installation

The following Python modules can now be installed within our Virtual environment:

python -m pip install requests

python -m pip install luma.oled

python -m pip install gpiozero

python -m pip install lgpio

Pi-Hole App Password

In order to query the Pi-Hole using the API you need to add your unique App password to the config.py file.

If you haven’t previously generated a password you can generate one from the Pi-Hole Admin Dashboard on the “Web interface / API” tab under “Settings”. You need to click the “Configure App Password” button. Store the password somewhere safe as Pi-Hole will only show it to you once.

Config File

The config-template.py file must be renamed to config.py

mv config-template.py config.py

Then you must edit it and add your Pi-Hole app password:

nano config.py

Find the line:

APIpassword = "YOUR PIHOLE APP PASSWORD HERE"

Add your API password between the quotes.

Save and exit using CTRL-X, Y then ENTER.

Test Script

At this point the screen should be ready to go. You can test it using these steps:

cd ~/pi-hole-screen

source venv/bin/activate

python oled-screen.py

Hopefully your screen is working.

Setup Cron

To get the script to run at startup we can add an entry to cron using crontab:

crontab -e

and adding the following line to the end :

@reboot sleep 60 && /home/pi/pi-hole-screen/venv/bin/python /home/pi/pi-hole-screen/oled-screen.py > /home/pi/pi-hole-screen/oled-screen.log 2>&1

You cron file will look like this :

# For more information see the manual pages of crontab(5) and cron(8)
#
# m h  dom mon dow   command
@reboot sleep 60 && /home/pi/pi-hole-screen/venv/bin/python /home/pi/pi-hole-screen/oled-screen.py > /home/pi/pi-hole-screen/oled-screen.log 2>&1

Save and exit using CTRL-X, Y then ENTER.

Reboot the Pi and the script should display Pi-Hole data on the screen after approx 60 seconds. This delay gives the Pi time to connect to the network before it tries asking Pi-Hole for data. Pressing the button will scroll an additional set of data onto the screen.

The text output from the script will be directed to “oled-screen.log” which can be useful to pickup any error messages.

OLED Screen Bezel

The black screen bezel was 3D printed to enclose the OLED screen and it’s PCB. Due to variations in OLED module the bezel allows a bit of adjustment. The screen had to be positioned by hand and then glued into position. The bezel was attached to the case using double sided tape.

The STL file is available from my Thingiverse channel.

Here is a basic animation of the 3D printed bezel :

Pi-Hole Status Screen in Action

The available status screens can be seen below :

Every 30 seconds the main screen scrolls and refreshes the data. This gives a good indication that the script is still running without needing to check anything else.

• Screen 1 (Main)
  • Total blocked percentage
  • Total blocked count
• Screen 2 “BAQ”
  • IP address
  • Blocked percentage
  • Total blocked count
  • Total number of queries
• Screen 3 “CMD”
  • IP address
  • CPU utilisation
  • Memory in use/Total memory
  • Disk space used/Total disk space
• Screen 4 “X”
  • Indicates that Pi-Hole has been disabled

The case I’m using is a “DesignSpark black” case from RS Components.

Thoughts on Ad-blocking

I decided to try Pi-Hole because as a parent I needed to be able to demonstrate I was in complete control of my network and my household internet rules were the law. This was generally aimed at ensuring the safety of children using my WiFi rather than spying on the adults.

This was especially true when my son’s friends were bringing internet enabled devices into my house. I didn’t want to deny them the ability to use those devices but I had no control over how they were configured. Parental controls or fancy apps may help your own kids but you can’t impose them on visitors.

Ad-blocking is a controversial topic especially amongst those that rely on adverts to generate an income stream. This is true for this site where advertising helps offset the hosting costs. I’ve always been in two minds as to whether I should encourage others to run a system that will strip the ads from this site and the sites of other content generators. I understand why people want to do it but I also feel on this site, adverts are a tiny price to pay for content that is generally helpful to people.

But the choice is ultimately yours.