I bought an Automatic car adapter back in December. I thought I had written up a blog post about it, but I can’t find it now. So either I didn’t write it, or I spelled “Automatic” wrong in it, or something like that. Either way, it’s a somewhat useful little device that lets you track your car trips, gives you some feedback on your driving habits, and can show you the actual diagnostic codes when your “check engine” light comes on.
It connects to the iPhone via Bluetooth. The adapter I got worked fine for several months, but it started getting finicky lately. It frequently fails to connect to the iPhone. This, apparently, was a pretty common problem with the first-generation adapters. They came out with a second-generation adapter recently, which supposedly uses a more reliable form of Bluetooth, and also has some new features that the old adapter didn’t have. They didn’t offer much of an upgrade deal for existing owners: just the same $20 discount that you can get through any of their advertising deals (see sixcolors.com, for instance, which usually has a link for $20 off). Well, I really didn’t want to spend $80 on a new adapter, but I gave in today and ordered one. I’m hoping it will work reliably.
Hopefully, I can remember to write up a little review after I receive it and have a chance to use it for a while.