Android Auto - Allow Automations to be triggered when selecting somewhere to navigate

[theverex]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
No - this is a new feature request.

Describe the solution you'd like
The Android Auto App is quite handy already with the ability to toggle entities and use favourites, however I notice that there is a navigation feature that works great to be able to navigate to certain zones.

It would be great if we could trigger an automation based on the zone / location that is selected to navigate to. At the moment, we can only trigger when you enter / leave a zone, not when you are navigating to a zone.

I would love to be able to jump in the car, use the HA Android Auto App, select Navigation -> Home and and have automations run when selecting that zone.

EG: Turn on lights, send vacuum to home base, open blinds etc.

Alternatively, when selecting 'Work' zone, turn on vacuum.

Describe alternatives you've considered, if any
The only current way to do the above is to use location based automations (enter / leave), however there might be times I don't want the automation to run when I enter / leave a zone, only when I navigate to that zone.

Additional context
No additional context to add.

Thanks!

[dshokouhi]

we can probably send back an event when an item is clicked on from the car, not sure if that should only be in navigate entities or extended to actionable entities as well.

[theverex]

@dshokouhi it would be great to have it for navigation entities, but all entities would also be powerful.

I assume that the 'Android Auto' entity / attribute could work here as well, but if you can understand where the entity was clicked from, that could open up all sort of great automations!

[dshokouhi]

well the thing is that we dont do this behavior anywhere else and the expectation may be that if we implement this, things like widgets and device controls are very similar. I wonder if there is a better way to get the data you want. Have you tried using the Last Notification sensor to see if Google Maps gives you that information to go by?

If that doesnt work you can also try adding an item to your favorites so you can execute the script or whatever you need before you start navigating.

Some specifics need to be worked out here if we plan on adding this as we need to consider all other app features.

[theverex]

@dshokouhi understood about all entities - if a change could be made just for the navigation entity only, that would work.

I tried the last notification sensor, but two main issues in this use case with navigation:

1. Battery usage is high for immediate notification syncing with HomeAssistant
2. Google Maps app doesn't give useful information in the notification itself - it will show the turn by turn text but it won't provide the data needed in the notification to understand the destination location.

[DarkWolf7]

I've been wanting this exact feature for a while. Another use case would be sending a text (via Tasker) that I'm on my way home with an ETA (Tasker used to be able to do this by itself but Google neutered the feature), or setting the air conditioning to home mode to precool the house before you get home.