Author Automates Kids' Bedtime Internet Cutoff With Pi-hole and Home Assistant, Blocking 100% of DNS Lookups
Updated
Updated · How-To Geek · Aug 20
Author Automates Kids' Bedtime Internet Cutoff With Pi-hole and Home Assistant, Blocking 100% of DNS Lookups
1 articles · Updated · How-To Geek · Aug 20
Summary
A Home Assistant automation now flips a Pi-hole group at bedtime and again in the morning, cutting selected kids' tablets off the internet without manual intervention.
The setup works by placing the tablets in a separate Pi-hole group and applying a single regex rule — .* — that denies every DNS lookup for that group only.
That DNS-based block is broad enough to stop web pages and streaming apps, but it does not kill connections already established, so a current Netflix episode may still finish.
The method also depends on device limits: children could bypass it with a VPN or custom DNS, but Fire Kids tablets do not expose those settings.
For households already running Pi-hole, the approach offers a quick alternative to router parental controls, firewall rules, or separate VLAN and SSID setups.