I think the video discusses using a Pi Zero v1.3, which is older kit but still available for $5. The newer Pi Zero W which includes WiFi and Bluetooth is $10. Of course, you need to add a power supply, case, MicroSD card and Ethernet cable so it ends up being a bit more than $5 ;) but most vendors have cost-effective kits to get you going.

Most of the manual network settings in the video were because they were testing it on a portion of an already established production network, which they didn't want to disrupt. At one point they did touch on setting routers to dole out the PiHole as the DNS server for any DHCP client. As you point out, that makes it transparent and mostly ubiquitous.

>Interesting usage... I am for the first time actually tempted to buy 1 or 2 to Pi (plural would have been too sweet...) to play when nights are longer again. I did not look / listen to the chip description closely (other than being 5$, which would point to Pi1 ?
>
>And the "action" in the clip - really necessary to set each device by hand? I am only a fumbler in networking, but IMO just Pi-pointing any subnet-routers DNS server should activate PiHole for every device connected to that subnet - so if I install Pi in top net, every subnet-router could use it and have ads stripped automatically. If a site does not work with PI, just switching over to top level guest WLAN (or free Lan cable from that router) should fix it without any DNS setting change? Or am I missing something ?
>
>IAC thx for the pointer...
>
>
>>I was watching a video describing the PiHole ad/malware blocker, and "StevenBlack" came up: yes, the VFP guru.
>>
>>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBXTnrD_Zs4
>>https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts

KBXTnrD_Zs4