It’s no surprise that I love gadgets. Work, home, at the gym, if there’s a device or gadget on the market, odds are good that I have one or have tested one. It’s no different in my car and the new Automatic Pro represents the third ODBI (on-board diagnostic interface) device that I’ve had plugged into my 2008 Toyota Highlander Hybrid!
The Automatic Pro is also an impressive technological device. Not only does it do what you’d expect, monitor all systems and report on any diagnostic events that occur (offering way more information than a little light on your dashboard) but it tracks location via a built-in GPS device so you always know where your car is currently and has been in the past. Yes, you can finally track your teen children’s routes throughout the day, including seeing a quality-of-driving score too.
Added to this second generation Automatic device is a crash alert system — just like in the far more expensive OnStar system — and support for third party apps including the Nest thermostat (imagine, you house starts warming up as you drive home. Automatically).
It’s all very cool, and tucked into a remarkably small device that’s invisible in use, tucked under your dashboard when plugged into the OBDI port. And your car quite likely has an OBDI or OBD-II port too: just about every car made since 1996 includes one, as explained by this article at makeuseof.com.
Enough with the chatter, though. Here’s my video review of the Automatic Pro:
I found it fun and easy to work with, a handy monitoring tool that also offers insight into where you drive, how far you drive, actual gas consumed, and even whether you’re an aggressive driver or not. Really!
Curious to learn more? You can check out the Automatic Pro at automatic.com. It’s $129 with no additional subscription costs or fees. It’s pretty darn slick…
I don’t have any idea about automatic pro vehicle diagnostic monitor but after watching your video I got the perfect reviews and thoughts on it.My father need sometimes these types of equipment and now i can also help him.
Question re this device – does it also let you reset some of the onboard diagnostics that tend to sometimes go awry (i.e. If you refuel with the engine running your check engine light sometimes goes on which is irritating as it means you won’t know when you actually have a problem. I have noticed this on both Lexus and Toyota Vehicles btw).
In other words can I turn off warning lights that are wrongfully lit? I often find myself waiting till my next service to have these lights reset as my trusted mechanic is a fairly lengthy drive from my normal routes of travel. But I would like my warning lights to be operable. Another that sometimes falsely lights is the tire pressure warning light. I guess having such a warning would be nice if the sensors reliably reported but my experience is there are many, many false positives.
As far as I know, it’s a diagnostic tool, it doesn’t let you reset status updates, etc. Check with your maintenance info system, however, because it usually has the ability to change some of these diagnostic flags, and there are secret (Google ’em) ways to turn off other lights like “oil change needed”.