The Automatic Link connects your car to your phone and the internet. And it works in Canada.

Automatic is a system that connects your smart phone to your car via the ODB-II port. It’s as simple as plugging the “Link” into your car, and downloading an app on your phone. They speak to each other via Bluetooth Low Energy.

Then, the app will record your trips. It keeps track of your mileage, the duration of trips, and even the routes you take. All of this is recorded on the app, as well as on a web dashboard.

Of course, once you have an internet-connected car, you can do all kinds of things. Thanks to Automatic support in IFTTT, you can automate tasks based on triggers. For example, the service can automatically send an e-mail trip details, or send an SMS when you enter or leave a certain place.

Other features:

– keeps track of you gas mileage, the cost of each of your trips, and how much fuel is left in the tank.
– rates how you drive (hard braking, excessive acceleration or speeding).
– reads engine problems. I haven’t been able to test this, as it says “No problems detected” — I assume if the car’s ‘check engine’ light is on, it will tell you why.

You can share any trip details on social media, SMS, or email.

Officially, the Automatic Link only works in the USA, and isn’t supported in Canada.

However, if you can get your hands on one, it works just fine on Canadian vehicles. I was able to have one shipped via an American mail-forwarding service.

The App is available for iOS and Android. In the case of the iOS app, it is available in the Canadian app store, so you don’t need to jump through the hoop of creating an American Apple ID just to use it.

The only downside to using the Automatic Car Link in Canada is that the units are not in metric. This isn’t a deal-breaker. I’m ok with measuring in miles. Besides, I send all my trips to a Google Drive spreadsheet, and I’ve set it convert imperial units into metric units.

More info: automatic.com

Note: This post is more than a year old, so I’ve edited it with updated info. Edits are indicated.

Update 2:  I’ve made a new post with information on using an iPhone with the Speakout data plan, as well as Using an iPhone 5 on SpeakOut.

If you’re interested in using an iPhone in Canada, but aren’t interested in being stuck in a lengthy contract, perhaps using a prepaid service can be an option. Here’s my 3-step guide to using an iPhone on a Pay as You Go plan in Canada.

Step 1: Acquire an iPhone in Canada.

First thing you’ll need is an iPhone. You can grab one on eBay or from your friendly neighbourhood iPhone seller. I’m not going to go into how to acquire an iPhone in Canada, you can figure that bit out yourself. Maybe your husband just bought a new iPhone and wants you to have his old hand-me-down iPhone or something like that.

A few things to watch for, though. If you get a first generation iPhone (sometimes called a 2G or 2.5G iPhone), you’ll have to unlock it, since it was never sold in Canada. This is trivial, and can be accomplished using the iPhone Pwnage Tool on either Mac OS X or Windows.

If you acquire a newer 3G iPhone, it must either be a Rogers or Fido locked phone, or from one of the carriers that doesn’t lock their phones (ie: from Greece, Hong Kong, etc). There’s no 3G unlock yet, but it doesn’t matter if you have a Rogers-locked phone, because the popular GSM prepaid services all use the Rogers network anyway. If you have a Fido locked phone, your only option is to use a Fido prepaid plan, though.

[update: the iPhone Dev Team has unlocks for both the 3G and 3GS, as well as the original iPhone 2G — you can find that information on the iPhone Dev Team]

Step 2: Acquire a prepaid (“Pay as you go”) SIM.

There are a bunch of prepaid services to choose from in Canada, but you’ll want to go with one that uses a GSM network, such as Rogers Pay as You Go, PetroCanada Mobility, or my personal favourite: 7-11 SpeakOut.

The 7-11 SpeakOut service is a good deal for a bunch of reasons — free voicemail, free Caller ID, no contracts, airtime lasts a year and can be extended by just adding more airtime. For more information, visit the official or unofficial SpeakOut sites.

Every couple of months, 7-11 has a deal where you can buy $100 worth of airtime, and they’ll give you a free phone. It’s usually a Nokia 1600, 1208, or some similar “burner” phone. It’s pretty much just a basic GSM phone, with no frills. But we don’t really care about the phone, we just want the Subscriber Identity Module or SIM from the phone.

[update: in my opinion, the 7-11 service is the best, as the airtime lasts for a full year with any domination of top-up, and there is no cellular data to worry about. Rogers has its own Pay-As-You-Go service that is similar, but be sure to read all the fine print before signing on!]

You can usually find the SIM underneath the battery:

Take out the SIM and sell the phone on eBay 😉 You won’t need it anymore.

Step 3: Put the SIM in your iPhone 2G or iPhone 3G and you’re done.

Use a paperclip or the official Apple SIM removal tool (an Apple-branded paper clip) to open the iPhone SIM tray. It’s on the top of the phone — just push the paperclip into the hole next to it, and it will pop out.

Drop the SpeakOut SIM into the tray. It’s notched, so there’s no way to put it upside down. Just don’t force it in:

Note that the SpeakOut SIM works just fine in the 3G Rogers-locked phone, since the SpeakOut service also uses the Rogers network. So no unlock is needed.

That’s it, you’re done. You have an iPhone in Canada on a Pay As You Go plan. No contracts, no system access fees, nothin’.

The only downside is that there’s no mobile data available on SpeakOut, but this isn’t a huge problem since there’s always free wifi available somewhere.

[update: to clarify — the goal is NOT to have cellular data — 2G or 3G on the iPhone with Pay-As-You-Go, because it would probably be super expensive. Instead, I want just phone functions, voicemail, and SMS texting, which all work just fine on the 7-11 Speakout system. You can use the iPhones other data functions (e-mail, Safari, etc) on wifi networks. I read and reply to e-mails even when I’m not near a wifi network, and then the phone just sends and retrieves e-mail when I am near one.]