miklat-alert

March 19, 2026 · View on GitHub

Visual alert indicator for the Israeli Home Front Command (Pikud HaOref) Red Alert system, built for Raspberry Pi Zero with a WS2812B (NeoPixel) LED strip.

The script polls the official alert API and drives a NeoPixel strip to show the current status at a glance:

Color	Meaning
🔵 Blue	System starting up / self-test
🔴 Red	Active alert (rocket / hostile aircraft)
🟠 Orange	Pre-alert ("in the coming minutes")
🟢 Green	Alert released – turns off automatically after 5 minutes
⚫ Off	Idle / no active alert

Hardware Requirements

Raspberry Pi Zero (W / WH / 2 W)
WS2812B (NeoPixel) LED strip – 15 LEDs (configurable in code)
330 Ω resistor (placed on the data line)
5 V power supply adequate for the strip (each LED draws ≈ 60 mA at full white)
Jumper wires

Wiring Diagram

              Raspberry Pi Zero
             ┌──────────────────┐
             │                  │
             │  GPIO 18 (PWM)   │── 330 Ω ──┐
             │                  │            │
             │  GND             │──────┐     │
             └──────────────────┘      │     │
                                       │     │
              WS2812B LED Strip        │     │
             ┌──────────────────┐      │     │
             │  DIN  ───────────│──────┘─────┘
             │  GND  ───────────│──────┘
             │  +5V  ───────────│── 5 V Power Supply (+)
             │                  │
             └──────────────────┘
                                 GND of Pi and Power Supply
                                 must be connected together

Note: The 330 Ω resistor is placed between GPIO 18 and the strip DIN (data-in) pin to protect the data line from voltage spikes.
If your strip has more than ~30 LEDs, power it from an external 5 V supply and connect the ground to the Pi's GND.

Software Installation

1. Prepare the Pi Zero

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade -y
sudo apt-get install -y python3 python3-pip git

2. Clone the repository

sudo git clone https://github.com/t0mer/miklat-alert.git /opt/redalert
cd /opt/redalert

3. Install Python dependencies

sudo pip3 install -r requirements.txt

This installs:

rpi_ws281x – low-level WS281x LED driver
adafruit-circuitpython-neopixel – NeoPixel high-level library
adafruit-blinka – CircuitPython compatibility layer for Raspberry Pi
loguru – structured logging

4. Enable SPI (if needed) and set GPU memory

Some WS281x configurations require SPI or a minimum GPU memory split:

sudo raspi-config
# Interface Options → SPI → Enable
# Performance Options → GPU Memory → set to at least 16

Reboot after changes:

sudo reboot

Configuration

The script reads configuration from environment variables:

Variable	Default	Description
`TARGET_LOCATION`	(empty – all locations)	Hebrew city/area name to filter alerts for (e.g. `רעננה`)
`MAX_IDS`	`1000`	Number of alert IDs to keep before clearing the seen list

Set them in the systemd service file or export before running:

export TARGET_LOCATION="רעננה"

LED Strip Parameters (in code)

Constant	Default	Description
`LED_COUNT`	`15`	Number of LEDs on the strip
`LED_PIN`	`18`	GPIO pin (must support PWM – GPIO 18 recommended)
`LED_BRIGHTNESS`	`65`	Brightness 0-255
`LED_DMA`	`10`	DMA channel

Running

Manual test

sudo python3 /opt/redalert/redalert.py

sudo is required because the WS281x library needs root access to the GPIO/PWM hardware.

Install as a systemd service

Copy the provided service file and enable it:

sudo cp /opt/redalert/redalert.service /etc/systemd/system/
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable redalert.service
sudo systemctl start redalert.service

Check status:

sudo systemctl status redalert.service

View logs:

sudo journalctl -u redalert.service -f

Service File Reference

The included redalert.service runs the script as root, restarts on failure, and waits for network connectivity:

[Unit]
Description=Red Alert
After=network-online.target
Wants=network-online.target systemd-networkd-wait-online.service

[Service]
KillSignal=SIGINT
WorkingDirectory=/opt/redalert
Type=simple
User=root
ExecStart=/usr/bin/python3 /opt/redalert/redalert.py
Restart=always

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

To filter for a specific location, add an Environment line under [Service]:

Environment="TARGET_LOCATION=רעננה"

License

See LICENSE for details.