Automatic Link

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Automatic LinkFor a while I’ve been wanting to get some sort of OBD-II adapter and software (like Carbonga) so I could troubleshoot the occasional check-engine light on my ’03 Toyota Highlander. After reading about the Automatic Link back in March, the allure of a shiny new gadget for $70 (with no additional service fees) was too strong to resist so I pre-ordered it.

Four months later in early July, Automatic started shipping the Link as part of a limited private beta and I was lucky enough to be a part of the testing effort. Earlier this week, the final 1.0 release of the app and device started shipping, available to everyone.

The Link is a small white plastic device that plugs into the OBD-II port in your car and pairs over low-power Bluetooth 4.0 to the app on your iPhone (Android support is supposedly coming later this year). Once the device and your phone are paired, the Link will monitor your driving and alert you if you accelerate or brake hard, or go over 70MPH.

The app will track your trips and show you a map (with start and end points and markers for hard accels/brakes and speeding), distance traveled and duration, MPG for the trip (compared to the EPA rating for your vehicle), and estimated gas cost of the trip. A weekly “score” is calculated based on your driving habits and you can easily scroll through all of your prior trips. It can also show diagnostic codes for your car’s Check Engine Light (CEL) and locate nearby mechanics. A Crash Alert feature will be added soon that can notify the authorities in case you’re in an accident. When you turn off your car, the GPS coordinates are automatically stored so you can find your parking location later. The app uses Bluetooth and Location Services (i.e., geo-fencing) to determine if you’re near/in your car and can automatically start in the background which means you don’t have to remember to launch it before driving. This seems to work really well and makes the Link a set-it-and-forget-it installation (although if you reboot your phone, or install a new version of the app, you do need to launch it manually at least once).

All of these neat features do have some limitations, however.

  • You can turn off the different warning beeps for hard accelerating/braking/driving over 70MPH but cannot tweak the thresholds. If you drive in areas where the speed limit is 70 (or over), the warning beep can be annoying (although after it alerts you three times, it won’t warn you again until the next trip).
  • The hard acceleration and braking alerts sometimes seem too sensitive, and other times don’t seem to fire when I think they would.
  • There is no “real-time” display in the app while you’re driving, such as a speedometer/odometer and no landscape/rotation support (I sometimes have my iPhone docked in landscape mode while driving).
  • Automatic says it uses “local average” gas prices but since this doesn’t take into account grade levels and you can’t actually specify how much you paid per gallon at the pump, your trip costs may not be accurate. I still use GasCubby to track all my fill-ups and maintenance.
  • Since the app does require Location Services to be active in order for the geo-fencing/app launching to work, you may notice a drain on battery life (although personally I haven’t noticed).
  • Automatic recommends one Link per car (of course, since they want to sell the hardware). You can move the Link between cars, but you have to go through the pairing process in the app every time you move it back and forth (it will re-link to the existing trip history). The app also supports multiple drivers for a single car but I have not tested that feature.
  • None of your data is available outside of the app. Unfortunately, this isn’t the FitBit for cars (yet?): there’s no web site where you can view/report on your trips, you can’t export it from the app, no e-mail alerts/reports, etc. Everything is locked inside the app.
  • the Bluetooth connection with the Link seems to cause occasional voice quality issues on my Bluetooth hands-free system when making phone calls (Automatic says this is an Apple problem)
  • the app isn’t a universal binary so if you run it on your iPad it’ll be in 2x iPhone mode

Hopefully a lot of these things will be addressed in future updates: there’s a lot of discussion on these topics (and more!) over on the user forums and the Automatic staff are frequently responding.

My biggest problem with the Link is that I haven’t been able to use it for what I originally wanted it for: clearing my check-engine light! Back when I pre-ordered, I was having CEL issues all the time with my old Highlander (usually after oil changes due to a loose air hose). In the long delay between my pre-order and the private beta finally starting I ended up getting a new Highlander and thus haven’t been able to see how the CEL feature works (much like my FitBit issue several years ago).

The Automatic Link might not give you a full diagnostic view of your car’s inner workings like other solutions available, but for $70 (and no service fees) it’s a cool way to at least start getting a look at some trip data and your driving habits and promises to be even more useful in the future.

3 Comments

  1. Automatic announced that the Link will be available for retail purchase in Apple stores. However, the price has also inexplicably increased to $99. While I’m happy with my $70 purchase, I’m not sure I would have pulled the trigger back in March if the product was $100, especially in light of what it actually does vs. what is promised it may do in the future.

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