Running Pi-hole to see what my smart TV was doing
Sometimes the most fascinating technological discoveries aren’t found in massive corporate announcements, but in the simple, curious experiments we run at home. A few weeks ago, I decided to dive into the world of home network monitoring by pulling a Raspberry Pi 4 out of the drawer.
The goal was straightforward: install Pi-hole, a fantastic tool for network-wide ad blocking, and use it to observe the digital habits of my smart home devices. This wasn’t just about blocking ads; it was about listening to the network traffic.
Once the setup was complete, the real fun began. I pointed my LG C2 smart TV to the Pi-hole instance and started monitoring how often the device was “phoning home”—essentially, what network requests the TV was making.
While I no longer run the Pi-hole setup full-time on my network, the curiosity was satisfied. I simply wanted to see what my smart TV was up to, tracking its digital footsteps across the network.
The results were surprisingly revealing. The query log didn’t just show routine pings; it uncovered a stream of communication. The smart TV was not just checking in, it was actively phoning home and sending out a host of other requests, revealing the full scope of its digital activity.
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