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Orange Pi-Hole Advert killer

Recently on a video I was raging about how useless the internet was becoming with all the adverts. One comment underneath spurred/shamed me into action:

As it turns out my Raspberry Pi box of SBCs was emptier than I remembered, however my Orange Pi box was replete with possibly suitable SBCs, including an Orange Pi PC left over from a previous blog and video.

I liked the auto-cooling version I had previously made, and now seemed like a good time to press it into service cutting out all of those pesky online adverts!

The Pi-Hole advert blocking project has a bit of history now, and the community behind it is mature and productive. Due to my nerdiness I went to their github site and followed installation and tips etc. The software installed fine over the top of armbian for the Orange Pi PC.

There were a few weird hiccups along the way (aren't there always?):

1. The startup script for the fan (see this link) did not work, due to (new?) requirements that startup scripts have START|STOP|RESTART|ETC blah blah which I don't quite understand at this point. Fortunately I had a working image which include the fantemp.sh script, so I used that as a base for this project.

2. I wanted to use the Orange Pi Zero 2 which would be perfect for the role - and I have one in my Orange Pi box, but software support for the H616 processor is not great at the time of making this project - if it improves then I will have a look at possibly swapping out to this SBC.

3. Router issues - my ISP issued router™ is an idiotic piece of junk. The ISP will not support a customer with any other piece of hardware (!!), so I have stuck with it for a few years - but this Christmas I have asked Santa to bring me a better router. Until then, to get to the part of the router that allows me to specify the Orange Pi(hole) as the DNS server, I need two 64 bit passwords embedded (but not hidden) in their source code <heavy sigh>. So right click, download 

4. GPIO access - to control the fan I needed access to a GPIO which then triggers an SS8050 transistor to draw enough current for the fan. Unfortunately that took a bit of a while to sort out, and in the end I used this github site to solve the problem.

5. WiFi or cable? In the end I connected the Orange Pi PC directly to the router via an ethernet cable AND I was able to power it from the router through a USB port - a neat option now sitting side-by-side with the router.