As pandemic strikes all over the world, we mourn the loss of life and tech. SiriusXM has announced it is permanently shutting down Automatic, the 3G-equipped device for the car. It uses OBD2 under your dashboard to communicate information about your drive including location, speed, position, and trouble codes that appear when your check engine light illuminates.
I'd been using it for years to track miles and even to automate tasks around record-keeping and the connected home. It's actually quite a tragic event because at the moment, there's nothing on the market that offers comparable features.
The original Automatic was released by Automatic Labs in 2011 and the company was acquired by SiriusXM in 2017.
In the near future, the servers will be taken offline and all the Automatic devices will become useless chunks of plastic.