Homebridge update issue

[ShiningStar]

The issue I am facing:
In Home app on iPhone, devices that are linked to Homebridge often will show as not responding for periods of time. I’ve narrowed it down to when Homebridge has in its logs unable to check for updates, just the user here had (except all of mine are timeout errors). Running npm install of any plugin in terminal takes minutes to hours to do, sometimes working, other times not.

Homebridge issues with pihole "Failed to check for Node.js version updates"

I am using Homebridge for my smart home on the same device as pihole. Pihole works in my setup as the one and only dns (unbound) and dhcp server. Since im using pihole, i'll get this messages in my homebridge log: [2/2/2022, 8:25:09 AM] [Homebridge UI] Failed to check for Node.js version updates - check your internet connection. [2/2/2022, 8:25:09 AM] [Homebridge UI] [npm] Failed to check registry.npmjs.org for updates: "getaddrinfo EAI_AGAIN registry.npmjs.org" - see https://git.io/JJSz6 for …

I’ve changed the configuration of npm to use HTTP instead of HTTPS and set Strict-SSL to false, for both local and global. The issue remains.

nslookup as suggested in the link about also returns results, so it’s not blocked. Also disabled DOH and attempted it, same result - takes forever or times out in Homebridge.

Details about my system:

• Raspberry PI 4, with standard image.
• PiHole
• Homebridge
• Cloudflared DOH service

What I have changed since installing Pi-hole:

• uses Cloudflared to return DNS requests. Configured using the PIHole guide.

Any help would be appreciated.