Multi-Sensory Red Alert Automations for Home Assistant

The Project

https://github.com/danielrosehill/Home-Assistant-Red-Alert-Automations

This repository provides a complete set of Home Assistant automation YAML configurations for responding to Israel's Pikud HaOref red alert system. Built on top of the Oref Alert HACS integration by Amit Finkelstein, these automations provide multi-sensory alerts through PA announcements with pre-recorded audio, RGB light color changes, light flickering, and siren activation. They have been tested in production during real alert events.

How the Alert Lifecycle Works

The system tracks the full alert lifecycle from pre-warning through active alert to all-clear. The Oref Alert integration exposes a binary_sensor.oref_alert entity that turns on when your area has an active alert and off when the all-clear arrives. It also has a country_active_alerts attribute for nationwide alert counts and a selected_areas_updates attribute that includes preemptive warnings.

The repository includes 7 automations: 4 for real alerts and 3 for testing.

Real alert automations:

• Early Warning -- Triggers on Pikud HaOref preemptive warnings (Hebrew text containing 'in the coming minutes'). Lights turn orange, airport-style PA chime plays followed by a pre-recorded voice announcement, sirens activate, and lights flicker for 30 seconds. Orange holds for 3 minutes, then all lights restore to their pre-alert snapshot.

• Active Red Alert -- Triggers when binary_sensor.oref_alert turns on. Identical sequence but with red lights. The automation first snapshots all current light states using scene.create, pauses any playing media, clears the playlist, then sets all RGB lights to red at full brightness. After the chime and PA announcement, smart sirens activate while lights flicker on and off 15 times over 30 seconds. Uses mode: restart so new alerts during the hold timer reset the sequence.

• All Clear -- Triggers when the alert sensor turns off. Lights turn green for 3 minutes with a PA announcement, then restore to the pre-alert snapshot.

• Mass Alert (100+) -- Triggers when more than 100 areas are under simultaneous alert nationwide. From real-world observation, 100+ simultaneous alerts reliably indicates a ballistic missile attack (from Iran or Yemen) rather than a localized rocket event. This automation plays a PA announcement only.

Hardware Requirements and Audio Setup

The automations are designed for a multi-room audio setup, tested with Snapcast via Music Assistant, but any media_player entities supporting announce: true should work. You also need RGB-capable smart lights grouped into a single entity, and optionally Zigbee or Z-Wave smart sirens.

All PA voice announcements are included as MP3 files in the repository's audio/pa-messages/ directory, generated using OpenAI TTS with the onyx voice. There are 13 audio files covering every scenario: early warning, active alert, all clear, mass alert, plus countdown and conclusion messages for each test type. An airport-style chime plays before each announcement.

Test Automations and Customization

Three test automations (early warning, active alert, all clear) have no trigger and are run manually from the HA UI. They include a 15-second countdown PA announcement before the test, use shorter flicker durations (10 seconds instead of 30), and restore lights immediately rather than holding for 3 minutes. This lets you verify your entire setup works without waiting for a real alert.

Every automation file includes # CUSTOMIZE comments at each point where entity IDs need to be updated: light entities for snapshot and flicker lists, the RGB light group, media player entities, siren entities, and audio file paths. The automations also include # TODO comments where you can add MQTT publishing, REST webhooks, or custom siren scripts.

During a real alert cycle, the automations fire in sequence: pre-warning turns lights orange, then if the alert reaches your area, lights switch to red with sirens. When the alert ends, lights turn green for 3 minutes before restoring to their pre-alert state and resuming any paused media playback. The system is designed so that multiple alerts in rapid succession reset the timers rather than stacking.