How’s did get the screen going
For me it works it’s just not functional enough for daily use in my car without the favorites screen. (literally hundreds of devices, can’t be scrolling through pages of covers to find the garage)
Once that feature (planned as far as I understand) is implemented I can use it. Until then it’s too cluttered to be useful in the car for me.
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That’s why I defined input buttons for the garage door and the gate. Only those are in the input button list.
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I can wait for the UI to catch up. I don’t want to build workarounds for something dev already has planned. (also input button is just as stacked as everything else. It’s a complex install)
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I have a complex setup as well, but when I added the input buttons, I was surprised that there aren’t any other, because everything else is button.
Fully agree. Waiting for simplified list of AA enabled entities without the need to browse through categories and long lists. In reality I just need one button to open/close the gate.
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Same here. Lots of entities to browse for anything.
Maybe devs can piggyback on how voice assistant exposes entities for use.
Actionable notifications are working amazingly. Thanks to all involved.
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While I love having HA everywhere, including my car, I am not sure how I would use it given it is way more practical to control what you need via voice (Google or Alexa as I have both in the car… you should hear them fight 
). I guess I am asking what other users use it for… cause I need more ideas to work on 
For me, I really don’t like to use voice control. I rather reach up and press a button.
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Unfortunate. Please don’t drive in states/cities where my loved ones live!!!
Clicking one button to open the gate and garage door is not more disturbing than speaking “open the gate” and then trying to provide the pin number so it gets properly understood by google or apple…
I’m pretty sure you use the touch screen much more than that for normal radio/navigation etc operations…
@adorobis I have an Acura TLX which has a control knob instead of a touch screen as the AA screen is too far away anyway. The infotainment screen lower down is touch but I use the controls on the steering wheel for music leaving only a few things that need the screen (ie airflow speed).
(Stock image, top screen is not showing AA but embedded NAV)
It can be quite distracting to open the garage door that way. I got around the need for a pin code by creating a toggle that always resets to off after being turned on. This toggle triggers the garage door to open when it is turned “on”. It is maybe the only (at least that I can think of) thing that I control verbally with non natural language. For example I have to say (using a different name for the door) “Alexa, turn on barn doors” (instead of open) and the garage opener opens without bothering me with a pin code. Nobody knows the alternative name so I am not worried about security and anyway there is another deadbolt before entering the home.
Everything in my home (hundreds of devices) is named in such a way that now, or in the future, I can control, or poll it for information, verbally as the names are carefully structured to eliminate the need to remember what it was called. There are a few exceptions to avoid insane names. The basic structure is simply [room name] + [what is the device] and a basic example is [Office]+[Table Lamp].
Yeah, I was also thinking about applying some workaround to remove the need to provide the PIN.
For now I’m waiting for the AA interface to evolve and I’m usually using my old RF remote for the gate. Much easier and faster than speaking to google assistant or tapping on the HA screen.
@adorobis It takes time for the garage door to open so I open it when I am too far for the homelink button to work. All I need to do is yap at Alexa (or google) to turn on XXXX and that is it. This is the Node Red code I use to get around Amazon’s lawyers. To close the garage overhead door I can use the regular command as that doesn’t require a pin.
So… I am still desperately trying to find a use for HA on my car screen 
I am a bit geeky so I am not joking
have you considered a Cover Template so you can use natural language like open and close instead of turn on and turn off?
I know this has been requested by a lot of users so wanted to mention here that work has begun on adding a Favorites category to the Android Auto app. This will be the first category listed at the top and will contain a list of entities that you have configured in the phone app.
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I think I tried that and I believe I found that anything that requires an “open” command gets the automatic pin requirement. Hopefully my testing was not thorough and I am wrong… because it does bother me a bit to say “turn on”.
@dshokouhi - As for favorites, I am happy they are being worked on! Hopefully they can be set to be the default view when you open HA in the car so selecting one is a two step process (for touch screens) and less knob twisting for me. When setting it up, please keep “knob control” in mind as apps like Spotify have non sensical setups for knob based control… to like a song I have to scroll 4 spaces to the right, click the 3 dots, and then scroll 4 spaces to the left… isn’t liking a song a top use case? Easy on touch screen but not on knob control 
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I believe so as well. For google the workaround could be to just configure the phrase that would be “open the gate” or “open the garage door” that will trigger the custom script/toggle in HA.
Exactly. Those favourites should be opened by default.
Pin is not a requirement, what you want to do is define the open and close cover portions of the template to include the pin. The cover template will execute those actions with the pin already supplied in the service.
As of the first PR they will be the first category so it should be fairly quick to get to. Open app, tap Favorites, select entity.
We are looking to see how to improve the default view currently but its out of scope for the first PR. The goal is indeed to allow favorites to be quickly and easily accessible. The first PR at least puts things in a good place for muscle memory 
we had some fixes for rotary input to avoid the jumping around users were experiencing. I think keeping favorites at the top should still allow for easy to control. I recommend joining the beta once teh PR is merged so you can check things for yourself.
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