Getting Started

Getting Started

This page takes you from installing Alert Redux to your first working alert, on your phone and on a dashboard, in about fifteen minutes. Along the way it sets up the three notifier groups that the rest of the wiki's recipes use.

Install

1. In HACS, add https://github.com/arkane-systems/ha-alert-redux as a custom repository of type Integration, install Alert Redux, and restart Home Assistant.
2. Go to Settings → Devices & services → Add integration and add Alert Redux. There's nothing to fill in.

The integration page now has three buttons you'll use: Add alert, Add generator, and Add notifier group, and Configure sets the defaults.

The cards are installed with it. If a dashboard says "Custom element not found" after installing or upgrading, refresh the browser page.

Notifier groups

Alerts don't name phones or speakers directly. They send to notifier groups, which you define once. Then "who hears about what" is decided by a group, and changing your phone means changing one group, not every alert.

The recipes in this wiki use three groups. Create them with Add notifier group (you can change what's in them later; the names are what the recipes refer to).

Phone

Your phones, through the Home Assistant companion app.

Field	Value
Name	Phone
Legacy notify actions	Add one per phone: Action notify.mobile_app_<your_phone>, everything else as it is.

Mobile app actions get the best treatment: each alert's notifications replace the previous one, they're cleared when someone acknowledges the alert, and they carry Acknowledge and Snooze Alert buttons.

Speakers

Something that makes a noise: smart speaker announcements, or TTS. This group is loud, so it can be kept quiet at night.

Field	Value
Name	Speakers
Notify entities, or Legacy notify actions	Your speakers' notify entity or action (an Alexa Media Player notify.alexa_media_* action, say, or a TTS notify entity).
Loud	On
During quiet hours	Hold (send when quiet hours end)

Persistent

A notification in Home Assistant's own notification panel: the place to look when your phone was off.

Field	Value
Name	Persistent
Persistent notification	On
Clear the persistent notification when acknowledged	On (the default)

Defaults

Now open Configure on the integration page. Most settings can stay as they are; set these:

Setting	Value	Why
Default notifier groups	Phone, Persistent	Every alert that doesn't choose its own groups uses these. Speakers are kept for the alerts that need them.
Default reminder schedule	10, 20, 30, 60 (the default)	Reminders 10, 30, and 60 minutes after an alert starts, then hourly, until someone acknowledges it.
Quiet hours → Quiet-hours entity	A Schedule helper, e.g. schedule.quiet_hours from 22:30 to 07:00	While it's on, loud groups (Speakers) hold back alerts below the threshold. Create the helper first under Settings → Devices & services → Helpers.
Quiet hours → Priority threshold	Warning (the default)	Notice and Informational alerts wait until morning; Warning and above get through.

If you leave Default notifier groups empty, alerts that rely on them go to the fallback group (a persistent notification), and a Repairs issue reminds you to choose some.

Your first alert: Garage door left open

The classic: the garage door has been open for ten minutes, and probably shouldn't be.

Click Add alert, choose State: an entity is in a given state, and fill in:

Field	Value
Name	Garage Door Left Open
Priority	Warning
Icon	mdi:garage-open
Entity	your garage door, e.g. cover.garage_door
State	open (the entity's real state, as shown in Developer tools → States, not the translated "Open")
Delay before firing	10 minutes
Notifications and messages → On message	The garage door has been open for 10 minutes.
Notifications and messages → Done message	The garage door is closed.
Notifications and messages → Notification buttons	Label Close door, Action cover.close_cover on cover.garage_door

Leave the rest as it is, and submit. You now have alert_redux.garage_door_left_open.

Ten minutes after the door opens, it fires. Your phone gets "The garage door has been open for 10 minutes." with three buttons: Close door, Acknowledge, and Snooze Alert. If nobody does anything, reminders follow at 10, 30, and 60 minutes. When the door closes, "The garage door is closed." replaces it, and the alert is idle again.

To test it without waiting, set the delay to a few seconds first, or point it at an input_boolean you can switch by hand.

The card

Edit a dashboard, Add card, and choose Alert Redux (or in YAML, type: custom:alert-redux-card). It shows every firing alert, most important first, with buttons to acknowledge, snooze, and run the alert's own buttons. When nothing is firing, it says so.

For an admin view, also add Alert Redux admin (type: custom:alert-redux-admin-card). It lists every alert, firing or not, and has Add alert, Edit, Export, and Import buttons: often quicker than the integration page.

Reading a recipe

Each recipe in this wiki has:

• The problem, and why this kind: the reasoning, which is the part to borrow when your situation is a little different.
• In the UI: the fields to fill in, in a table like the one above. Fields not mentioned stay as they are. Fields in a section (Notifications and messages, Supersession, and so on) are marked with it.
• To import: the same alert as an import file.
• What you'll see, and variations.

Entity IDs in the recipes are examples: change them to yours.

Importing a recipe

Each recipe's import file can be pasted straight into Home Assistant:

1. On the admin card, click Import and paste the file (or choose it as a file).
2. Change the entity IDs to yours.
3. Click Check. This is a dry run: it says what would be created, or lists every problem (a misspelt group, a missing field), and changes nothing.
4. When it's clean, click Import.

Or use Developer tools → Actions, in YAML mode:

action: alert_redux.import
data:
  dry_run: true  # remove to import for real
  definitions:
    format: alert_redux
    version: 1
    alerts:
      - name: Garage Door Left Open
        # ... the rest of the recipe's file, indented to match

Import files name notifier groups by name, so create Phone, Speakers, and Persistent first (or change the names in the file to your own groups). An alert without notifier_groups uses the default groups. Durations can be written as "HH:MM:SS". Importing the same file twice is harmless: an identical alert is left as it is. To replace an alert you've already imported, turn on overwrite.

Here is the first alert as an import file:

format: alert_redux
version: 1
alerts:
  - name: Garage Door Left Open
    kind: state
    priority: warning
    icon: mdi:garage-open
    entity_id: cover.garage_door
    target_state: open
    delay_on: "00:10:00"
    message: The garage door has been open for 10 minutes.
    done_message: The garage door is closed.
    buttons:
      - label: Close door
        action:
          - action: cover.close_cover
            target:
              entity_id: cover.garage_door

Next

• Choosing an Alert Kind for your next alert.
• The learning path, for a tour of what Alert Redux can do.
• Designing Your Notifications when you want to fine-tune who's told what, and when.