With all the sensors on the market this year it’s hard to decide where you should be investing your money. Automatic, a smart driving assistant for your car that lets you monitor a bunch of cool car-ish things like engine health, and your check engine light, just announced that all of its sensors are now iBeacon compatible. This is where you should spend some cash.
What the hell is an iBeacon? A technology that Apple’s recently released (here’s a Wikipedia article explaining it) to help retailers and companies track things better with your iOS device. How’s Automatic plan on using it?
Simple.
Say you’re leaving a parking garage and instead of stopping to pay an attendant with your credit card, Automatic wirelessly signals the gate that you’re there using iBeacon, deducts the necessary funds from a credit card linked to your Automatic account, and opens the gate. The same system could work for toll booths, repair shops, parking meters, car washes, gas stations, and so on.
For the pessimists it means making it easier for companies to separate you from your money, but for the optimists in the crowd it means no longer having to worry about the stupid minutia of daily life while driving your car. For me, it means the future is pretty much here and I, for one, can’t wait until all this stuff is integrated with my car.
