Hey everyone today we would like to announce that development has begun on Android Auto. In December, Google has released an update to Android Auto and are finally accepting IoT apps into the Play Store. As you guessed the team wanted to get features added immediately. Check out the new upcoming features the team has already started to add!
These features are currently available in our beta channel and will be released to stable in the next 2 weeks.
Once you launch the app from your head unit you will have easy access to devices like your garage door, lights, locks and even scenes.
Tapping on a category allows you to see its entities and their state (with instant updates!). There are also simple touch controls to do things like opening the garage door before heading out.
In addition to selecting a domain you can also navigate to anything in Home Assistant that has a location, like persons, devices or sensors.
We have also added a new binary sensor allowing you to automate when you are in the car and connected to the head unit. There is an additional attribute for the type of connection as well.
A big thank you to Jbassett and jpelgrom for their contributions to the new Android Auto app. We look forward to the continued improvements to this new experience.
Wow! this is going to be GREAT! I have been having to create āroutinesā in Android auto to control things like my garage door. Will be nice to see this! Will we be able to view things like Camera feeds?
Instead of a one dimensional value for the entity, could we get which vehicle is using android auto? Itād be nice to automatically open the garage door when Iām using my car, but not another, for example.
No streaming is not allowed per Googleās guidelines last I checked otherwise youāll have YouTube and Plex
If Android Auto allows for that data to be pulled then we can, personally I have not seen the docs around this.
Feel free to submit a feature request for this
This particular feature will be available in the beta that gets pushed to the play store tomorrow evening, alternatively you can grab the APK off the GitHub releases page and sideload it in the meantime.
I use an app called AAStore, which has a load of third party apps you can use on Android Auto. You can use AAStore to convert up to 10 websites into Android Auto apps, so I have my whole Home Assistant Lovelace dashboard accessible via my carās touchscreen. Of course, it only works when the car is in āparkā.
This is awesome, So we will be able to set notifications to pop up when letās say the garage is closed? I currently use TTS to do this but a pop up would work better
āAndroid Automotive supports apps built for Android as well as those built for Android Autoā source
āIn-car infotainment systems are heavily regulated due to safety concerns to the point that every app and individual interface needs to be vetted by regulatory bodies around the world. This is incredibly difficult, expensive, and time-consuming for app developersā source
It doesnāt exactly sound like a perfect match for a open source project with a fast development pace. However IoT-apps are supported as a category (source) so itās possible in theoryā¦
I am doing this currently by checking the Bluetooth Address my phone is connected to. As Android Auto does connect (not only but) also via Bluetooth this could already be done
